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Eternity in the Heart 




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Eternity in the Heart 

and Other Sermons 



By 

William A. Quayle 

Pastor of Grand Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, 
Kansas City, Missouri 



X 



CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS 






LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

DEC 3 »904 

Gopyrifc-!it tntry 
/W -2-L. IQO + 
CUSS Cis XXC Not 

COPY 8. 



COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY 
JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 



These sermons are as they came from the 
heart and lips of a preacher on his feet. 
They are left as the stenographer took them 
thinking that possibly their crudeness of form 
might be compensated for by the approxima- 
tion to living words. 

William A. Quayle. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I. Eternity in the Heart, - - 9 

II. The First Christian Triumvirate, 35 

III. " But without Faith," - - - 63 

IV. God Enduring Bad Manners, - 90 

V. Resolution, - - - - - 119 

VI. Against Thee Only Have I 

Sinned, 142 

VII. Remember, - - - - - 170 

VIII. David Jesse, - - - - - 199 



I. 

ETERNITY IN THE HEART. 
PRAYER. 

WE thank God that He has required so much of us: 
He has' not dealt with us as if we were incompetent, but 
He has dealt with us as if we were greatly competent for 
greatest things. The things God asks of us ennoble us: 
He wants us to love Him; He zvants us to love the world; 
He wants us to plow the world's fields, and dig the world's 
gardens; He wants us to plant seeds and plow them; He 
wants us to gather in harvests and thresh them; He 
wants us to walk, not like children of the darkness nor 
the night, but like children of the light and of the day. 
We are folks that belong to the day-dawns, — that is what 
He has told us. Our candles are lighted by the stars and 
the sun as well. He has asked us to go on the Highway 
of Holiness, and keep to it; He has assumed that we had 
wisdom, and that we had discretion, and great powers. 
He has told us we were houses for God to live in. 

O God, Thou art the lifter-up of our head. How can 
we be pusillanimous and base when we are God's dwell- 
ing places! How dare we be foul and depraved if God 
wants to come in and dwell in the best room of our life! 

We thank Thee for the way Thou hast talked of us; — 
for the high things Thou hast commanded of us; for the 
hard yoke Thou hast put on us; for the severity of the 
labor Thou hast given us. We are not complaining, we 

9 



io Eternity in the Heart. 

are giving glory to God that He thinks we can do hard 
things, and that we are competent for God's big busi- 
ness. O Lord, this morning, make us see what sort of 
folks zve are if we should measure up to the importunings 
of God's Spirit: and may everybody's life awake this 
morning to see how God would have it live and behave. 
We arc God's grozvn-up people. We are God's artisans 
and plowmen. We are God's lawyers and clerks. We 
are God's people, set to God's big business. May we. 
execute wisely and persistently, with sweet fidelity, with 
holy charity, and with deep humility, because we see who 
God is J and knozv zvho we are. 

O God, sweeten our breath; exalt our purpose; make 
divine our activities by the breath we breathe and the 
zvater we drink, and the bread we take, and the vocation 
we labor at— by EVERYTHING. 

Thou Great God, who girdest the soul as Thou dost 
gird the world by zones of stars and glories of infinite 
night, gird us round with God so that we shall feel as 
we go into the battle with tightened girdle at our loins, 
that God is our strength and makes war with us. 

Make this a good day to us and to everybody. Bless 
people that are a long way off on the sea, and give them 
good sailing; let them feel that they are sailing toward 
the harbor where God is the life and the anchorage. 

Bless people in dark lands, — O Holy Spirit, talk to 
them through Thy Gospel, and if they have it not, speak 
to them without the scabbard of the Gospel and show them 
Thy great broad sword. 

Bless people who are in prisons, even though they 
have the shackles of their crime upon them, the Lord 
loosen the prisoners from the handcuffs of their iniquity, 
and let them out into the daylight of the large liberty 
because they shall be sons and daughters of the Great God. 

Bless all people in hospitals, whose days are painful 



Eternity in the Heart. ii 

and whose nights are darker than the dark skies unlighted 
by the stars; whose cheeks are Hushed with fever; whose 
heads are aching with wild, spasmodic achings, — bless folks 
in hospitals. 

Bless shut-in folks. Bless people who would like to 
be in God's house and can not find the way. Bless people 
who would walk God's path, but whose feet are tired, and 
they can not. Make the way to God shorter than the 
way to Church. 

Bring us along our journey, a good way to-day, O 
God. Shine in our faces so that we shall know it is 
Sunday morning to the heart; and afterwhile, bring us up 
the steep hill, inside the open gate, and out on to the lawn 
of Heaven, where morning brightens, and the wind is 
fresh as from off the sea, and where CHRIST shall meet 
us, Amen, 



"He hath set eternity in their heart." — Eccl. iii, n. 
(Revised Version — Margin.) 

There are some Scriptures whose environment 
needs to be known, lest the meaning be either mis- 
apprehended or misrepresented, Some texts are 
like barnacles on the sea rocks ; if you wrench them 
away, you shall not be able to comprehend the life 
which they are. But this Scripture I read in your 
hearing this morning is as self-sufficient as a star; 
it needs no prelude, no postlude; you do not need 
to know whence I fetched it. As a matter of cour- 
tesy and custom I read you where the Scripture 



12 Eternity in the Heart. 

was found, but it is of no consequence. You do 
not need to know the soil out of which it sprung; 
you do not need to know the sky under which it 
shone — it is not consequential. When I read you 
"He hath set eternity in their heart/' everybody 
who knows anything knows there is but one body 
who could have eternities to set in anybody's heart. 
There is only one personality that deals in eternities ; 
all the rest of us traffic in times. We deal with 
minutes, we watch the second-hand move upon the 
dial of the watch, we count the hours that pulse 
betwixt the cradle and the grave. We deal in 
years; we do not even deal in centuries. Our cal- 
endar is the almanac, one year at once, and many 
of us never live to see December, who touched our 
feet upon the pathways of January. 

It is time we deal in. But there is one Body 
somewhere — I will not answer where at this mo- 
ment—but there is one Body somewhere who plays 
with time as if it were a bubble floating in the sky. 
There is one body somewhere, and His name is 
God, and He inhabiteth eternity, and deals with it 
as if it were an inconsequential thing. You don't 
need to ask who this "He" is. You do not need 
the answer — you understand — you can not miscon- 
ceive. We do not need to be told who does some 



Eternity in the; Heart. 13 

things. When I read in this Book, which has more 
of the magnificent and inscrutable truths than all 
of the literatures of all the earth, when I read in this 
Book that "He inhabiteth eternity," I know who 
that is. There is only one body who has eternity 
for a dwelling-house, and that body is God. When 
I read that "He holdeth the winds in His fists," I 
know there is only one who has hands that may, 
with thumb and finger, grab the winds by the throat 
and choke their howling trumpetings still. I know. 
I do not need to be told, when I read "He toucheth 
the mountains, and they smoke," I know there is 
only one body whose fingers bring the electric spark 
and set the mountains on fire. I know. When I 
read "He calleth the stars by name," I know who it 
is; I do not need to have anybody tell me. There 
is only one body that knoweth the stars in their 
nights, and knoweth the names they ought to bear, 
and the names they do bear — one body, only one. 
When I read that "He holdeth the ocean waters in 
his hand," I understand that there is but one chalice 
in the universe capacious enough to hold the turbu- 
lent, tumultuous sea. When I read, "Who loved 
me, and gave Himself for me," I know without any- 
body telling me, who this "who" is. There is only 
one who gave Himself that He might fetch me 



14 Eternity in the: Heart. 

out of sin to God. There are some things so self- 
evident that even a superfoolish man would under- 
stand at the outset when the thing was mentioned, 
who it was that did these things. And when I read 
you "He hath set eternity in their heart," every- 
body knows this He is God. 

Now, the strange thing, I take it, is this, that 
when the King James translators gave this passage 
they read it thus: "He hath set the world in their 
heart." Do you know why they missed it? Do you 
know why they underestimated it? I think we 
know. Because the truth was too big for them. 
It broke their backs under the load, and they thought 
a thing that made their bones fairly crack, — they 
thought that thing must be untrue. And do you 
know, men and women, that one of the greatest 
credentials of truth is man's unbelief, not man's be- 
lief! The greater the truth the less does it seem 
natural. I am told that God came and dwelt with 
man, and in him. The meaning is so supernal and 
so vast of girth, so supreme in altitude, so star-lit 
on its summit, so sunny on its sides, so great a 
truth — yet, why? Why, because it is no kinder- 
garten truth; because it is no little figure in arith- 
metic. It is a part of the intricate mathematics of 
the Almighty God. The little things I can grasp, 



Eternity in the: Heart. 15 

but the Cyclopean things bewilder me with their 
shocks and surprises; and the sudden shooting of 
the lights is upon my eyes until my eye-balls blister, 
and I put my fingers to them, and say, "This is not 
daylight, but death." Some things are too great. 

And when the old translators — and they were 
great men, those old King James folk; they carried 
the lexicon of the English language in their bosom 
as no one has since the English language was con- 
structed-; they knew more of the music of the Eng- 
lish speech than the great Milton. But there were 
some things they could not do. You must not blame 
them. You must not blame a child because he is not 
a man grown; give him a chance, and he will be. 
You must not blame a child because he can only 
speak in monosyllables. Time will come, by and 
by, when he will speak in polysyllables. You must 
not blame these men when they show shocked sur- 
prise that somehow the Scripture meant "eternity 
in the heart," and drew back from its approach, and 
did not dare to venture upon its broad meaning. 

Have you not noticed that children will go bath- 
ing in the brook, but are scared at the great plung- 
ing ocean? It is because the ocean is so big and 
adventurous, and so wide, and so deep ; because be- 
hind every billow is the shudder of the vast ocean ? 



1 6 Eternity in the Heart. 

And you must not think it strange that a child 
should be scared of the great water, and that a man 
or woman grown should be afraid of the briny, 
dripping hands of the great sea. And you must 
not think to blame these men if in their looking 
divine thoughts in the face, they were abashed by 
them, and started back affrighted, and said, "He 
hath put the world in their heart." 

Some things you can not see unless you climb 
up to them. You must build observatories to see 
the stars, and you must let the centuries build ob- 
servatories from where other and divinest thoughts 
can be seen. And so these men did the best they 
could; and it was no small thing to mark down in 
pale ink upon the scroll "He hath put the world in 
their heart." That is a big thing. Many of us do 
not know that. We can keep our own house in our 
heart, but are so little we can not do more than that. 
Our wife, our husband, our children, our folks, — 
and then we shut up in our secretiveness and ex- 
clusiveness, and we shut the world out, and say 
"this is the earth." Why don't you break your 
fences down and walk out of doors? Then, there 
are some people who keep their village community 
in their hearts. They praise with sweet laudations 
— and I love to hear people praise the ground that 



Eternity in the Heart. 17 

bore them, the hedge-rows under which they 
walked, and the brook where they have made love 
with a lover I am glad to hear them praise those 
places, — but to think the world is our village ! they 
can hold the village, but they can get no further; 
they are limited. 

And then, there are people who can get Rhode 
Island in their heart, but they can not get Kansas, 
and they can not hold Texas. They can hold those 
little principalities in America — they can get those 
little plots of ground into their heart, but the great 
stretches they can not understand. They deluge 
their heart with a commonwealth. 

It is the world God has put in the heart, not a 
village, not a cradle, not a graveyard, — though all 
of these things belong to a proper consecration of 
anybody's heart, — not a village, not a house with all 
the rooms sacred with the breath of prayer, not a 
commonwealth with all its history and its soil 
marked with heroes' blood, but the world. Some 
people let their nationality shut them in. There 
are Englishmen who think the world is complete 
in the roll call of their nation, and there are Amer- 
icans who think America is the last frontier of the 
world. But God is bigger than that. When He 
builds a man, He does not build him only to be a 



18 Eternity in the Heart. 

family man, — though he means him for that, thank 
God. A man to whom the cry of a child is not 
sweeter than music, and the man to whom a 
woman's face, kiss, and smile are not beautiful, is not 
a man ; and the woman who would not rather feel 
her baby's chubby arms go slipping close around 
her neck than hear the plaudits of the earth, is not 
a woman. This is good, but, mark you, God meant 
men's lives to be this and more, this and more. 

I understand what you mean by talking about a 
Secretary of State for America, but I think I would 
not get it in my head what it means to be a Secre- 
tary of State for the world. I know what it means 
to be Minister to Germany, but I do not know that 
I would be able to speak out in meeting what it 
means to be Minister to the Earth. And these big 
words Jesus taught were those you and I would 
have given grudgingly, and with a sort of penurious- 
ness would have felt them slip from our fingers. 
Jesus taught them out loud, and said these great 
words, and they have been throbbing up and down 
our souls ever since trying to get a pathway in our 
hearts all these years. The world idea — that is the 
big idea. 

There are some people who think if they ad- 
mire Napoleon they ought to go and say their 



Eternity in the Heart. 19 

prayers, and say "the Lord forgive us our tres- 
passes." It is no sin to admire Napoleon. Why? 
Because he was a man with the world idea, who 
stood in France and reached out and wanted to hook 
his fingers on the earth, and he reached his hand 
eastward and westward, northward and southward, 
and wanted to get it on the earth; and the great 
world idea fascinated everybody who has a soul, and 
who admired Napoleon because he had appealed to 
their imagination. 

The reason why Rome for twenty centuries cast 
its spell over the Europe, as Prospero cast his spell 
over the sea and men wrecked upon his coast, is 
because it was a world domain and stretched forth 
its hand to the planet. The world idea is big; and 
I want you to observe that when those King James 
translators said, "He hath set the world in their 
heart," they pronounced a great word. It came to 
pass the Revisers saw the truth, but did not write it 
down. They said, "Such riches are too vast, this is a 
treasure-house too magnificent." And they said in 
the Book, "He hath set the world in their heart," 
and, like a woman does, put the great truth in a 
postscript and on the margin said, "He hath set 
eternity in their heart." There was only one who 
dared to speak the great words with solemn sedate- 



20 Eternity in the Heart. 

ness, with marvelous fluency, and Jesus talked 
about mighty things. He was used to eternities. 

Well, now, sisters, brothers, what is man's mark 
— what is the thing that is his glory and consti- 
tutes his consequence? I would answer thus: He 
is the one thing here that has the possession of 
eternity. God has not set eternity in any animal's 
heart ; and God has set eternity in every man's heart. 
That is man's glory, and that is man's wonder. 
Some try to define man, and say man is the laughing 
animal; and the gift of laughter is God's gift. If 
you have forgotten laughter, why do you not go 
back and learn the art afresh? I thank God that 
never since Christianity began to be propagated and 
man began to think and live, never has it been seen 
so clearly that the gift of humor is the gift of the 
sublime God. Man is a laughing animal ; but he is 
not only that. Man is defined to be a talking animal, 
and so he is, — and some of them talk a great deal 
more than their share, and there ought to be some 
statute of limitation to their remarks. Man is a 
talking animal, — I do not deny that, but that is not 
his symbol. He is a laughing animal and a speak- 
ing animal. And man, we are told, is a thinking 
animal, — and that is quite right, he is a thinker. 
There are things which are so great that when you 



1 Eternity in the; Heart. 21 

look at them it is as if you were overwhelmed by 
a sudden flood, but by and by you come to look at 
them and begin to ponder over them, and their mean- 
ing comes upon you. People say man is the moral 
animal, and that is right, — man is the only moral 
creature. And we are told that man is a praying- 
animal; and that is quite right. Man is the one 
animal that has an altar and knows a cross when 
he sees it, and is able to lift his troubled, pleading 
hands up to God. That is quite right, but that is not 
man's mark. What is man's mark which includes 
all these ? Why, here — God has set eternity in their 
heart — that is it. Man is the creature of eternities. 
All other things are short lived — he alone is long 
lived. All other things are plunging forward 
toward the grave, drawing with wearied and be- 
lated steps to the end of his journey, the graveyard, 
and man is the one personality that, by and by, 
will go across the path of death. He belongs not to 
time, but to eternity. God has set eternity in his 
heart. That is his glory, that is his menace, if you 
will; that is the thing which amazes him when he 
thinks upon it. Man is fated with eternal estate 
and has eternity in his bosom. Man flies higher 
than eagles dare to soar. The eagle finds an arrow 
jagging at its heart, and, with fluttering wings and 



22 Eternity in the Heart. 

home-sick cries, stops, then tries again and can not 
rise, and drops, as Matthew Arnold says, "a heap 
of fluttering feathers," but man goes where eagles 
dizzy with the height ; he lives when eagles feel the 
tug of death, and die. Man is the eternal person- 
ality, he hath eternity in his heart. The mark of 
eternity upon anything makes that thing august. 

Do you know why men read Carlyle yet? It 
is because Carlyle had the shadow of eternity upon 
him. You can read Sarter Resartus, you can read 
of the French Revolution, you can read the life of 
Oliver Cromwell, and in all is the sense of eternity. 

Do you know what makes Milton the prince of 
the poetic world? Because he was a man that did 
not dabble in time, but dwelt where eternities 
marched around him. 

Do you know the reason why Ruskin is a man 
who has impressed his personality upon mankind 
for so long is because he knew that time was waste, 
and eternity was the one fastness where the soul 
might dwell forever. 

Anything that eternity touches becomes sublime. 
Do you know why death is sublime ? Do you know 
why a dead beggar, lying rigid upon the street, is 
more magnificent than a living king, with all his 
splendor? Do you know why it is? Because 



Eternity in the Heart. 23 

eternity has come and said, " I^et me enlighten his 
eyes," that is why. 

Do you know one of the most noble and pathetic 
passages in literature is where Mrs. Quickly tells of 
how in the death of Sir John Falstaff he fumbles 
with the sheet and then calls out, "God, God, God," 
and so Jack Falstaff for once, and only once in all 
his career, was great ; it was when he was in death, 
and all his paltriness and all his littleness and all his 
mad unreason are gone and he is lying there, stark, 
with never a quip on his lips and never calling for a 
drink, — no vaunting, no wickedness, — lying there, 
dead; and the angel of death, with wings folded 
across his bosom looking him in the face. 

Saw you not the dead man, and do you not know 
that all his littleness has slipped from him. I have 
known bad men in their day, and saw them die, 
and somehow I could scarcely believe they had been 
bad. It was the shadow of eternity on their faces. 
Whenever eternity comes to anybody's life it makes 
that life symbolical, glorious. 

Do you know why the Bible is the one Book, 
after all they have done with it and for it, after all 
subtractions and additions, — do you know why the 
Bible is the wonder of all books ? It is this, because 
the Bible is the only book that treats of eternity. It 



24 Eternity in the Heart. 

is the one book whose solemn music talks about 
eternal years; it is the one book that looks toward 
the sky-line of the soul; it is the one book that is 
not looking - backward, but is always marching on, 
and that is the reason why the book can never be a 
book of to-day, but of to-day and to-morrow. It 
is talking about the only thing" that is worthy, the 
vast personality to whom this name has been given 
— the book of eternity. And do you know the rea- 
son why Jesus, more and more, apart from other 
things he says, and does, God's great Son, still hold 
the supremacy among the sons of men, and will 
hold it forever, because he appeals to the instincts 
of the human heart. We are eternal folks. 

Do you think if Jacob, long dead, were to come 
back among us, he would not know the world to 
which he came. But I will say this, if Jacob came 
here and saw lovers wooing he would understand 
that. Why, he would remember when first he be- 
held Rachel, and the love he bore her, and how seven 
years were briefer than seven brief days, he loved 
her so. Love is one of the eternal blessings of the 
heart. God hath set eternal secrets in the soul, and 
you can not rub or scrape one poor figure in this 
sum out of your heart, you can not extinguish the 
great mark, mankind's divine life of soul. He was 



Etsrnity in the Heart. 25 

a lover, and would know the lovers at the marriage 
altar — he would know every one of them, and would 
beg the privilege of kissing the woman on the lips 
once, all for the remembrance he had of Rachel. 

Do you think that if Abraham came into our 
century he would know us, our new garments, our 
new hospitality, our this, and our that? He would 
not; but if he saw a father fondling a son, — a man 
with an Isaac on his knee, he would say, "This is 
the same old world." If he saw a man holding his 
lad by the hand and going churchward, if he saw 
a woman kissing her little lad on the forehead and 
on the lips and on the cheek, and taking him by the 
chin and saying, "Kiss me once more, my son," he 
would feel at home. If he saw a woman being 
mother to a baby and kissing it awake or asleep, — a 
woman will kiss a baby asleep, and it is the sweet- 
est slumber that ever came to tired eyes — and when 
she has kissed the babe asleep she thinks she can 
keep it asleep by kissing it. But if Abraham were 
here he would know the world by that sign. 

Do you think if Moses came to this service this 
morning he would know our tabernacle? No. 
Would he not look for the ark of the covenant? 
Would he see it? No. He would look for all the 
paraphernalia* but when this preacher, from this 



26 Eternity in the Heart. 

far off home, kneeled down and twisted his hands 
together and closed his eyes and looked out and saw 
God, and said, "Thou, who lovest us," do you not 
think Moses would feel at home? And he would 
not ask for the ark and would not inquire for the 
tabernacle, but would say, "I thank Thee that Thou 
art here, and though I am a stranger in a strange 
land, I am at home." It is the glory of eternal life. 
That is the reason why women dare venture to do 
things for humanity, because humanity, however 
near to bankruptcy, has eternity planted in the heart. 
And the reason why man can be so wicked is be- 
cause man can be so great, and the reason man has 
run so far backward is because he can run so far 
forward; and the reason man's hands are so dan- 
gerous are because they are so magnificent in possi- 
ble achievement. And the cry of a little child — 
God will stop work any moment to hear a baby cry — 
What makes the child cry ? Answer, it hath eternity 
in its heart. Why can a man love? He hath eter- 
nity in his heart. Why can a man grow graces, and 
a woman virtues? Eternity is in her heart. Why 
can people be courageous and strong? Answer, 
eternity is in the heart. Why can people sorrow, 
yet why are graves an eternal song? The answer 
is. there is eternity in the heart. What is the reason 



Eternity in the Heart. 27 

a woman never forgets her dead son ? What is the 
reason a man never ceases to think on his dead 
daughter? What is the reason a daughter never 
ceases to think upon her father ? What is the reason 
you can hear your father's voice yet, and when I 
speak his name you can see his face, and his 
arms are open and his breast is ready and his wel- 
come is so wide and his kisses are so sweet ? What 
is the reason you remember your father, and his 
love comes to your life and looks you in the eyes, 
and your sorrow comes to you afresh and the tears 
fairly blind you? What is the reason some of you 
women weep upon your pillow by night, and say, 
"O, Father, if you were here." What is the reason 
some of you men here, with your mother gone so 
many years that, honestly, you saw the other day 
how time was scraping her name from her grave- 
stone — what is the reason you men are hungry for a 
sight of her yet ? What is the reason you would run 
ten thousand years and never stop to catch breath if 
you could see her once? "He hath set eternity in 
their heart." We never stop loving, thank God, 
and we never stop sorrowing, thank God — only, God 
softens our sorrow, as he softens day light into the 
dusk and takes the glory out of the sky and leaves 
onlv dim reminiscences of glory flecking the clouds. 



28 Eternity in the Heart. 

and the twilight is here and the lamps of night are 
lit, one by one, and then it is so restful and quiet; 
so God softens our sorrows and sufferings and 
makes even our heart breaks among our posses- 
sions. And I do not speak at random this morn- 
ing, when I say a graveyard is good to have and 
is a good bit of land to possess. There are a 
thousand things worse than graveyards, one is when 
we have no love for folks that are gone. We love 
folks because He hath set eternity in our hearts. 

It was this week, Friday, a woman whose son 
had suddenly died, drowned in a stream nigh by, 
wrote me with tear splashes all across the page, and 
said, "May be you heard" — and I can hear the 
broken voice of her while she would try to say the 
thing she wrote — and she said, "May be you heard 
about my boy, and he is gone, — and he was my only 
son." She was a widow — that was it — he was all 
she had. She used to say, as she looked at him 
with such sweet glistening in her woman's eyes, and 
put her hand on his arm with a sweet caress, she 
used to say to me, "This is my son." She knew I 
knew her son, but she always introduced him. Why 
did she? She liked the job, it was in her heart to 
do it, and she always said, "This is my son, Dr. 
Quayle," and I said, "I know him;" and the next 



Eternity in the Heart. 29 

time she would say, "This is my son," and I would 
say, "I am glad to see your son." And now her son 
is gone, and she wrote with broken speech and the 
tears dripping down the page, saying, "I wish you 
would tell me if you think when I come into heaven 
I shall see him." O, that was pitiful. And I sat down 
and wrote, "when you come where your Christ is, 
you will know him." Do you think, beloved, for a 
minute that God Almighty would put eternity in a 
woman's heart, with her vast propensities and her 
short possibility of life — do you think that God 
would give a woman a baby and when it got so 
sick the woman could not keep it any more, and 
Christ would hold it in His bosom until she came 
to take it from Him — do you think Christ 
would give a woman a baby and having kept it 
so long, the woman would not know it was her 
baby when she came to the kingdom of Christ? 
"He hath set eternity in their heart." It is eternity 
in the heart with life and love; it is eternity that 
makes trouble so glorious ; it is eternity that makes 
peril not tragic; it is eternity that makes old folks 
fabulous in beauty; it is eternity. "He hath set 
eternity in their heart." 

The other day I saw a man walk down to the 
edge of the waters of death, and he loved life so 



30 Eternity in the Heart. 

well. He was a hale man, with a sunny smile and 
with ready laughter and with a contageous kindness, 
and with a hand clasp that somehow made you feel 
the world was bigger than you thought. Many a 
time we have gone down the road, he in his buggy 
and I in mine, and we both of us drove fine chariots 
— we could — we were moneyed men. He and I went 
down the road, and would meet each other, and he 
would haul in his lines, for he hired himself to 
drive, and I would haul in my lines, for I always 
drove — I am so good at it. Standing in the middle 
of the street, I would ask him where he was going 
and how he liked his job, and he would say it was 
fine to have work to do. There was, somehow, a 
wholesome manliness about him — and there is not 
anything about a man so fine as manliness, just as 
nothing about a woman so fine as womanliness. 
And so we would go; he would make his horse 
march in double quick time, and I would get my 
horse into his chronic two and a half an hour gait, 
and we would go on about our business. The man 
had no faculty in prayer — I have not often seen him 
in prayer-meeting — I have not often seen him in 
class-meeting — I used to see him in God's house. 
One time, not long ago, I went to his house and he 
was sick, and I said, "you are a fine fellow, to get 



Eternity in the Heart. 31 

sick" — he was such a fat fellow, and a fat man has 
no right to get sick, let the lean men get sick, but 
a man who has plenty of tissue has no business to 
get sick. I said, "you have no business to be sick, 
why don't you let your wife get sick instead of 
you?" The man looked at me, and his mouth 
wrinkled a little, and he said, "I have never been 
sick much," and I said, "O, well, take your share; 
you can have your share of sickness." And when T 
had to come away to make a train, he said to me, 
with a painful trick of laughter, like the shadow of 
a smile — only the shadow of a smile, "Brother 
Quayle, before you go, you would not mind, would 
you — " and I said, "We will pray together," and he 
said " That is it, that is what I wanted." And we 
kneeled down together, and his wife beside him, and 
we told God here was a man that was pretty sick 
and he needed God pretty bad, he was so sick by day 
and by night that if God would come and stay close 
by him and smooth his wrinkled forehead in the day 
and close his eyes in slumber at night — if God 
would come and be tender with him, like a mother 
is with her sick child, that if God's Christ would 
come there, we would be so thankful, all of us, the 
woman that knelt, the man that knelt, and the 
preacher, too, if God would stay pretty close by and 



32 Eternity in the Heart. 

not go away night or day, because this man might 
need Him, if He would stay close by we would be 
grateful and would bless Him, and after awhile 
bless Him for alway, and the man said "amen," 
and arose feebly and sat down with a smile under 
his mustache. And I went out, and soon death came 
in, and there was eternity in his heart. I declare to 
you, beloved, that the wonder of our life is that the 
folks we cross hands with and the people whose path 
we cross each day, they are the folks with eternity 
in their hearts, and all the divine music and min- 
strelsies are there. These women have had eternity 
set in their hearts, and this woman, to my own 
knowledge, as I have known her and known of her, 
as I have known of her before I knew her, has been 
trudging up and down this great America for years 
and years, because "He hath set eternity in their 
heart ;" and some of her beloved have gotten so tired 
they could not go with her, and have stopped and 
fallen asleep, but she has gone on. These women 
have got eternity in their hearts. O, women, I think 
God must love you a lot, because you are forming 
the march of eternity and you are taking more than 
gold to human souls, you are taking eternity with 
you as you go. O, men, here this morning, — eter- 
nity — that is what there is — that is Christ's field 



Eternity in the Heart. 33 

where he sets his Morning Glorys and Four O'clocks 
to tell you what hour it is, with the Morning Glorys 
in the morning and the Four O'clocks in the after- 
noon, only God's Morning Glorys bloom all the eter- 
nal day through, and God's Four O'clocks are awake 
in the morning and the evening and never shut their 
laughing 1 faces. 

Thank God, we are the eternity folks, Men, 
as you do your business for God, if your hands 
grow tired, never mind it, — you will have rest 
enough pretty soon, pretty soon. If you get tired 
in your duties, O beloved, remember there is not 
anybody gets tired in heaven. He hath set eternity 
in women's hearts, and in these men's hearts, and 
soon — I am not quite sure when it is, I have not 
found out, to tell the truth, I have not made inquiry, 
and to be plain, I do not care whether it is to- 
morrow morning or this afternoon, — but some of 
these times we who have eternity in our hearts — 
we will go walking up and see Him, and He will 
say, "I am He that inhabiteth eternity," and we will 
look at Him and say, "We have come up to see you, 
we, the folks in whose hearts you have set eternity," 
and he will look at us and say, "I am the Resurrec- 
tion and the Life." And we will say, "O, Thou, 
who art the Resurrection and the Life, we have been 
3 



34 Eternity in the: Heart. 

journeying a long stretch to come and see you, have 
you room for all of us ?" and He will say, "there is 
room, and to spare ;" and we will go in and out and 
find pasture. 

PRAYER. 

O, LORD GOD, it is very wonderful, this thing we have 
been talking about, and sometimes when we think about it 
■it seems so great we ourselves doubt its meaning, but, O, 
God, when we think about it zve would never again doubt 
it any more — it is so good and zve need it so much. God, 
keep these women, zvho are a long way from home, some 
from Nezv England, some from San Francisco, some from 
the South, and some from the margin of the Northern 
lakes, all of them this morning in a strange house, which, 
thank God, is not strange because Christ got here before 
them. Call every blessed woman by name, encourage her, 
strengthen her hands, give her voice some new pervasive 
music, and may God keep each and all of us and all of 
these folks in the Society here, anywhere, bless them, and 
may they alzvays keep steady, for they have eternity in their 
hearts. Hear our prayer for Christ's sake. 



II. 

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN TRIUMVIRATE. 

PRAYER. 

O, LORD, we didn't think about that that our times 
were in God's hands. We had thought our life was in our 
own hands, that zve made our comings and goings. We 
had misunderstood the case. O, Lord, forgive us; ex- 
cuse us for our folly. It is very easy to be simple, it is 
very hard to be wise, and we hadn't understood: but, 
"Our times are in God's hands;" He loves us; He plans 
for us; that exhaustless affection of His is stand- 
ing sentinel about our life; He throws His lines of sol- 
diers about us; He is making zvarfare for us; He is 
planning campaigns for our support; "our times are in 
His hands, — O, Lord, help us to leave them there; help 
us to do our best; help us to qualify our hearts for ex- 
cellency of service; help us to get acquainted with God; 
'help us to lift our faces to the Light that maketh the 
whole world light with a morning that never passes to even. 
O, Lord, may we fall in line with Divine Providence and 
be at one with Divine Grace, and may we not frustrate 
the grace of God; but as we hear the voice of Him that 
calleth us, may we turn our faces to Him and say, "Lord, 
inquirest Thou after me?" and then may we leave all and 
follow Him. 

Here we are once again: a company of God's folks, — 
little children in understanding, mature men and women 
in years; all our strength has come to us, and yet we 
.35 



36 Eternity in the Heart. 

haven't strength enough to do the thing we ought to do, 
nor courage enough to undertake the thing we ought to 
undertake. O, God, wilt Thou undertake for us! Un- 
dertake some great enterprise of manhood and woman- 
hood. 

We pray, O, Lord, that every good endeavor may find 
dews upon its lands, — as the dews come down to-night 
upon the grass, and hearten the grass and fiowers for the 
morrow, so may the dews of God's grace come down upon 
our life to-night and hearten us. We will have a hard 
week: a good many of us will have heart-aches and dis- 
tresses and lonelinesses and perils and temptations and 
fightings without and fears within; we will have boon 
companions who will tempt us to evil; we will have busi- 
ness circumstances that will tempt us away from the fine 
fidelities of noble practice: but, 0, Christ, if THOU art 
our companion and our help, we shall come through all 
and prevail. 

Bless us. Bless this company. There are so many of 
them we know, — so many more we would like to know, but 
Thou knowest all about them, Thou art their lover. May 
no man, however hard matters may have gone with him, 
forget God loves him. May no woman, however broken 
and discouraged her life may be, forget God loves her. 
Let nobody, however impoverished in worldly goods he 
may be, forget that the great God who is rich as a thou- 
sand princes, is his Father, and therefore, such a one, 
with such a Father, is exceeding rich. 

Bless us all with the outpouring of the Holy Ghost. 
Bless us. Equip us for the best that lies before us. May 
we be serene, sure, strong, full of faith and hope and 
effort and love, for Jesus' sake J Amen. 



The First Christian Triumvirate. 37 



"Now abideth Faith, Hope, and Love, — these three" 
— I Cor. xiii, 13. 

I purpose speaking on the first Christian trium- 
virate. The first Roman triumvirate was composed 
of Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. These three 
men divided the world amongst them. Julius Caesar 
was a man of imperial genius. He was the greatest 
product of the Roman race. He was orator and 
historian and statesman and soldier. He was be- 
sides all this, a builder of great cities. Crassus was 
the richest man of his day. > Pompey was a man 
whose talents were perilously akin to genius. And 
these three men, like three hands, took and held the 
Roman dominions. 

Now there were three men in the early church 
history, and these three men I denominate, "The 
First Christian Triumvirate:" and they were Peter 
and Paul and John. And to the consideration of 
their faculties and service, their demeanor, their 
manlinesses, their services to the church and the 
world, their self-consecration, the outcome of their 
labors, — to that, I ask your thought. 

Now when rightly understood, the world is noth- 
ing other than a place for mind to display its amaz- 



38 Eternity in the: Heart. 

ing powers. All history is a Colosseum in which 
mind meets mind. The problem of the world, men 
and women, is, not our bodies, but our minds; be- 
cause our bodies belong to our minds. Our bodies 
go at the behests of mind: they charge into battle; 
they hammer on anvils; they plow in fields; they 
write in ledgers; they go on the great deeps as 
sailors ; they work in the tunnels of the dark mines, 
according to the behests of the mind, — and the body 
is as much at the service of the mind as a bayonet 
is at the service of the soldier : so that anybody who 
cares to understand the world, must remember that 
so far as our doings in history are concerned, the 
body is an accident. Mind is everything. It is the 
mind that schemes ; that brings plans into possibili- 
ties; that brings possibilities into purpose; that 
brings purpose into truth, — minds are every thing. 

Now, Christianity on its one side, belongs to 
the earth, and on its other side, belongs to Heaven. 
On the one hand, Christianity is spirit; it is the 
breath of God ; it is divine ; it comes from the open 
Heavens ; it did not rise from the earth like smoke, 
but descended from the Heavens like light. The 
church of God was commissioned of Christ ; it bears 
His name; it is filled with His spirit; it is mixed 
with His love; it is bought with His blood; it is 



The First Christian Triumvirate. 39 

ransomed by His Cross ; it is exalted by His prom- 
ise ; it is saved by His hope, — that is one side of the 
church of God, wholly glorious, wholly Heavenly, 
wholly divine: but there is another side of the 
church of God that is human. 

Jesus came among us and preached doctrines; 
He gave us a life and doctrine, and he gave us 
power, and then He went away and left us. He 
left the world to the church, and He left the church 
to the world ; and He left man to plan for the com- 
ing of the Kingdom of God. I think the most gra- 
cious testimonial to the worth of human kind 
ever given, was that Christ dared to leave the 
church in human hands. He went away and left it, 
— He had twelve disciples, one of them was dead and 
worse, because he was a traitor ; and a traitor is a 
thousand times worse than dead, — and He left His 
church in the hands of eleven men. He went up 
through the blue sky into the topless heavens, and 
reached out His hands and blest them while He 
went up, and His words sifted down through the 
sky that amazing morning: but He left the church 
with us: so that anybody who proposes to under- 
stand the church, must understand that on the one 
side it is spirit, and on the other side, human. He 
must understand it is the portal of Heaven. He 



4o Eternity in the Heart. 

must understand that God meant, and God planned 
that the most amazing movement of history, — and 
I beg you to believe I am not speaking hastily when 
I call the church the most amazing movement of all 
history, — God planned that the church should cap- 
ture the earth. You think Alexander's genius was 
prodigal when he sailed across the Helespont into 
Asia Minor and conquered Asia in its western 
part and Africa in its northern part : but I want 
you to remember that Christ meant to make 
a conquest of the planet; He meant to have 
the islands of all the seas and the seas about 
the islands ; He meant to have ' all the mountains 
and valleys ; all the gold mines and the silver mines ; 
He meant to have all commerce and all religion and 
all culture, and all refinement; and the plan Christ 
had in mind was to conquer the earth : and He went 
away and had n't begun it. He went away, and He 
did n't have a single city ; He went away, and he 
had n't any capital ; He went away, and He did n't 
have a house He owned; He went away, and He 
had n't builded a single church ; He went away up 
into the topless Heaven as I told you, and as you 
know, and He left all of it in our poor, human hands. 
And the glory of the human race is that God's great 
Son, our Savior, trusted us so much that He left 



The; First Christian Triumvirate. 41 

His work, scarce begun, into our hands for its com- 
pletion. 

It is as if Shakespeare had begun to write a 
dream greater than "King Lear," and said, as he 
handed his pen into your hands, "You complete it." 
It is as if Milton had begun a greater dream of 
ecstasy than "Paradise Lost," and he said, "My hand 
is tired, and my eyes are blinded. Take you the pen 
and complete it." And God's great Christ, our 
Savior, only begun to write the story of Redemp- 
tion, and then He handed the pen into our hand and 
said, "You go on and write it." I insist in this 
presence here to-night, that the world is concerned 
in so vast an enterprise, such a kingly endeavor, and 
in the men whom God called to participate in the ex- 
tension of so marvelous a kingdom. 

If the Kingdom of God on the one side is em- 
pire, on the other it is philanthropy. God meant to 
turn all the world into a hospital where sick folks 
could be cared for; into a summer resort where the 
poor and the diseased could go, — He meant all that, 
but I call you to witness, He left the purse in our 
hands, and the staff in our hands, and the planning 
in our hands : He did n't tell us a single road to go ; 
He did n't tell us a single shore to go to ; He did n't 
tell us a single capital to seize ; He did n't tell us a 



42 Eternity in the: Heart. 

single one of the rules of this warfare, not one; 
but He said, "Go on. I have told you. Go on." 

Now here were three men who in the inaugura- 
tion of this great enterprise, bulked vastly greater 
than we could guess. They were, Peter, the sol- 
dier; Paul, the statesman; and John, the philoso- 
pher. Every great cause has three men in it: one 
man is the soldier, one man is the statesman, and 
one man is the philosopher, and they come in the 
order I have mentioned. First, the soldier comes 
ana conquers the realm. Second, the statesman 
comes and fortifies it and projects it into the future. 
Third, the philosopher comes and tells the machinery 
and the spirit of the great mechanism. 

Here was Peter. He was a man of rapid in- 
stincts. He did things and thought about them 
afterward. That is not always a good way, but I 
tell you, men and women, it is a good deal better, 
in my belief, to do things and think about them 
afterward, than it is to be everlastingly thinking 
about things and never doing them. 

We have been reading Amiel's Journal. A great 
many people fall into spasms over Amiel's Journal. 
They have n't read them, and therefore they have 
lots of spasms. Some people do, over the books 
they have not read. When I find people have a 



The; First Christian Triumvirate:. 43 

spasm over a book, I have my doubts about whether 
they have read it, because when they have read it, 
they do n't need to have spasms. Amiel's Journal 
are good books to read, — not totally wholesome. 
They are the history of a diseased man and a dis- 
eased purpose. They are the history of a man who 
knew what he ought to do, and did n't do it. They 
are not the history of an unclean life, not the his- 
tory of a pusillanimous life, not the history of an 
uncultivated spirit, but the history of a man who in 
his professor's chair sat and taught, and a man be- 
fore whose vision, stretched the infinite blue, alight 
with the ten million stars of God, and he could have 
grasped every one of them and brought them into 
the treasure-house of his bosom, — and he did n't 
reach out his hand and grasp one of them. 

I don't plead for doing without thinking, but 
I plead for deeds. Don't let your dreams die, and 
when they are dead, have not even the gray ashes 
for the wind to puff away. Have a care lest in your 
considerateness, — now there is the word "consid- 
erateness ;" it means that you think a good deal ; 
that you are wise ; that you are discriminative ; that 
you are selective; you don't take everything 
at your hand, but you run them over, — like a school- 
girl does the ribbons she is going to wear to parties. 



44 Eternity in the: Heart. 

She says, "I do n't want this to-night, and I do n't 
want this ; and that does n't go with my new dress," 
— and she takes just three or four one time, and the 
next time she takes three or four other ones, — the 
selective process. Now that is intellectual keenness ; 
that is right. We are meant to be judicial in our 
brain poise, but if your judicial frame of mind leads 
to paralyzation of action, you would better have 
done without the thinking. 

Now this man Peter was a man of action. He 
was doing things all the while; he had prodigal 
might ; he scarcely grew weary at all ; he could do 
with four hours sleep even as Napoleon did; he 
was simply God's dynamo in action. This man was 
meant to be a soldier ; to form legions ; to bring bat- 
talions into action; to lead great processions. You 
find him talking, — talking out in meetings when 
other folks ought to talk. But when he becomes 
consecrated to God, all these strange, electrical qual- 
ities come into a great procession and movement for 
the glory of God : and his voice is sounding on the 
Day of Pentecost, and thousands are converted; 
and he is working miracles at Joppa by the sea: 
and he is the same man that drew his sword upon 
the High Priest's servant and cut his ear off in a 
minute, in his eagerness to -serve his Master. This 



The First Christian Triumvirate:. 45 

man had all the qualities for a soldier. Sometimes 
when he got to thinking, his thoughts worried him. 
There are a good many people like that, they think 
so seldom that when they do think, their thoughts 
worry them. One woman married a preacher and 
thought he was a genius. After she had lived with 
him a few weeks, she knew better. t Good soul, he 
thought he was a genius, too. There is nothing 
worse than for any man to suppose that he is above 
ordinary conditions. It does n't do for people to 
think about themselves. They magnify their own 
powers and activities. And Peter got to thinking 
about what he had done, and he did what Methodists 
do, he backslid. He got to be a coward. His Mas- 
ter had said, 'Tut up thy sword." And pretty soon 
he was wishing he had n't drawn it ; and pretty 
soon, he had forgotten that he had a sword about 
his person; and pretty soon he was saying, "I 
have n't been with this Man." He was a man with 
an excitable temper, but his temper was liable to 
die down after the flame came up, and there was 
nothing left but the gray ashes of what used to be 
a conflagration : but this man had might in him, 
and this man, in his sermons, became bold, tremen- 
dous. He became the manifest leader for an army. 
He liked the battle fire, the clangor of arms: and 



46 Eternity in the Heart. 

in the days when the Christian church began, when 
we were forming our armies and massing our forces 
and beginning to march through the gateway of Je- 
rusalem, and needed some man of magnetic courage 
and mighty action, who counted not his life dear 
unto himself, some man with prodigal affection for 
the cause we loved and he loved as well, that man 
was Peter : and he lead us out of the gate of Jerusa- 
lem, out to the sea shore, and we saw the floods on 
which the Christian system and armies were to take 
ship and bring the Gospel to every man upon the 
face of the earth. This man was equipped to lead 
out armies. His dashing enterprise, his foresight 
betimes, the splendid clarion of his voice, the glit- 
tering leadership of the man, brought the armies 
of Christianity out into the open sky so that all the 
world saw them. You may say what you like, but it 
needs no supernatural vision to see that every great 
general, when he comes to a great exploit, becomes 
electrical. There have been many more men in 
American history who had more control over them- 
selves than George Washington. His enemies ac- 
cused him of cowardice, of slowness, of military cir- 
cumlocution; but there came times when this man 
was certain and swift as the swoop of an eagle down 
upon his unsuspecting prey ; there came times when 



The: First Christian Triumvirate. 47 

his slowness all vanished, and before his cannon 
thundered, he had turned them and seized the cita- 
dels and taken the armies against which he had 
gone. You will find it so with Sherman, with Gus- 
tavus Adolphus, with Garabaldi, you will find 
it so with Prince Rupert. There are times 
when the sword must not know whether it is 
in the scabbard or out. There are times of great 
action when the sword must not understand whether 
its mission is to lie resting and slumbering in the 
scabbard, or whether it shall be seized and whirled at 
an army's head and lead on to splendid victory. 

And so Peter, — I can hear his voice yet above 
all the anger of the battle and fury of the fight, I 
can hear this man's cry, "Forward !" I know a man, 
he is in Heaven to-night, but he lives on the earth 
as well, — one of those tumultuous-voiced men who 
cope with the thunder of the battle ; and he led the 
fight up Chickamauga field; and they heard him, 
when the cannons were muttering and the black 
sweat was on his cheek, they heard him, when the 
spit of bullets with their infernal menace clattered 
all about him, they heard him cry, "Keep to the 
flag !" and he held the flag in his hands, and he went 
walking on as if the whole field and the far moun- 
tains and the sagging plain belonged to him. O, 



48 The First Christian Triumvirate. 

well, that is Peter ! He has seen the Cross of Christ, 
and he says, "Forward!" he has seen the grave 
tenanted, Jesus in it, and he has seen the grave ten- 
antless, and Jesus gone out of it forever, and he 
says, "Forward !" He saw empires where death had 
seeded it down to graveyards for children and youth 
and middle-aged men and women, and old age with 
tottering step, and he knew that this army of his 
was meant to conquer all the graveyards of the 
earth and to turn their mourning and weeping into 
singing, and he said, "Forward!" This man, un- 
bridled, furious as the angry sea, with the charge of 
armies in his blood, and, — why, here is Peter, a 
member of the triumvirate. Mark you, I read three 
words: Faith, Hope, Love. Peter is the incarna- 
tion of Faith. He believes in his cause; he thinks 
his cause is just and great. He can not see his des- 
tination, but he marches toward the equator of the 
heaven toward which Jesus pointed. You can not 
make a great general without a great faith. George 
Washington believed in his cause, Abraham Lincoln 
believed in his cause, Sherman believed in his cause, 
Sheridan believed in his cause, Robert Lee believed 
in his cause. You can not make a great general 
when a man's strength is sapped by doubt. Peter 
believed. He was a man of faith. His skies glowed 



The First Christian Triumvirate. 49 

with the embers of faith upon the altars of his sky 
east or west. 

When you have conquered a realm, you must 
have fortifications ; and the soldier gives place to 
the statesman. Washington with his army gives 
place to Washington with his constitution and plans 
for making empire. First there was Napoleon the 
conquerer of Austria and Italy, and then there was 
the Napoleonic code. The general is a necessity. 
He seizes cities : the statesman holds them. So it 
came to pass that Peter gave place to Paul because 
Peter had a sword and Paul had a scepter; because 
Peter was a warrior and Paul was a prince; be- 
cause Peter had battle charges, and Paul had the 
munitions, not of war, but of statecraft. 

The day of the general is now and here ; the day 
of the general is to-day; the day of the statesman 
is to-morrow. The general lives between morning 
and dusk. The statesman lives past the portals of 
the sundown, and to-morrow, that is his day. It was 
so with Burke. As splendid as he was in his orations, 
he was, so to say, imbecile. People laughed at him. 
Those who listened to the torrents of his splendid 
eloquence, thought they saw the glowing of some 
sunset cloud. They listened to him for a little 
while, and then Parliament, which might listen to 
4 



50 Eternity in the Heart. 

such eloquence day and night, or empty the house, 
left him speaking to an impecunious company: but 
Burke was speaking" to to-morrow. All the bril- 
liant body of orators of Burke's day, where are 
they, and who are they? Do we listen to Sheridan 
now, as splendid as his speech was ? and we read of 
the triumphs of his eloquence as he spoke against 
Warren Hastings, — his speech was like a voice that 
woos to silence. And you lean your ear to his lips, 
and he can not speak, — but who does n't hear Burke? 
The man flames on your library shelves and his 
words seem like coals of living fire whose heat glows 
as the interior of volcanoes. He spoke for the 
future and the liberty of the human race. 

There was Paul. He was a statesman because 
with his largeness of vision, he perceived the whole 
field. He understood that the church of 
God was n't to do business for a day or a 
year or a century, but for all days, for all centuries. 
I tell you, if you think God is ever going to quit 
business, you are mistaken. If you think 
God is ever going to put His sword up, you are mis- 
taken. If you think God is ever going to cease His 
speech, you are mistaken. If you think any confla- 
gration can burn down God's edifices, you are mis- 
taken. If you think the machinations of evil men 



The First Christian Triumvirate. 51 

can circumvent God, you are mistaken ! When you 
are dead and your gravestone is moss grown, and 
our very name has melted like snow out of the 
recollection of the world, God will be in his 
youthhood. When a thousand years with their lag- 
ging feet have walked across the spaces of the world, 
God will be in His youthhood yet; ruddy of face, 
springing in step, resonant in voice, rejoicing in 
aspect, singing instead of sighing, serving the earth 
gladly, — God is going to be doing business forever. 
So that any man who proposes to be a statesman 
for God, must understand that he must plan for 
the eternal years for God. 

Some of these times, I think God will change the 
theater of action. I think he will roll the curtain 
down to lift it no more forever. He will put out 
all the footlights, He will let no single glow of a 
poor dim taper remain like a dying faggot on the 
hearthstone. All the seats will be empty, all the 
company gone; not any voice or lute; not any pro- 
cession, or any gathering at the doors ; all dark and 
dead ; but God will not have quit, — He will simply 
have changed the place of the procession of His 
great events : and Paul knew that. 

Now Paul had a great mind, capable of com- 
passing such vast designs as these. Whatever you 



52 Eternity in the; Heart. 

may think of Salisbury, I confess to you that when 
I see that man's broad brow and remember what is 
behind it, I wonder at the barn-like room of the 
man's brain. He knows enough and to let. That 
man has seen changes in great affairs ; and in the 
dark room of that man's intellect all these great 
processions rise and pass. A statesman's brain 
must have large rooms. He can not do 
business in a small house. First of all, Paul knew 
Rome, — all the Roman highways, every Roman cap- 
ital, the Roman speech. He knew the Roman char- 
acter, — its imperiousness ; He knew the Roman 
love for law ; he knew the sanctity of citizenship ; 
he knew his own belongings and his own rights, — 
he knew the Roman. 

He was also a Hebrew, and he understood the 
Hebrew. He understood the genius of the Hebrew 
race, — and not another race has produced greater 
genius or more splendid personality. Any man that 
sneers at Hebrewdom is a silly man, ill read in his- 
tory. There is n't a race known that has produced 
such men as Abraham and Moses and Ezekiel and 
Jeremiah and King David, and Saul of Tarsus, and 
Peter of Bethsaida, and John of the fisher village 
of Galilee. This man Paul knew the Hebrew race, — 
its virility, its weaknesses; he knew its fort- 



The; First Christian Triumvirate. 53 

resses of strength, its citadels of might. He 
had knowledge. And then the man had adaptation. 
He understood what sort of things ought to be done. 
He wrote the epistles ; he formed Churches ; he went 
to the great focal cities of the Empire of Rome; 
he traveled here and there. He knew that if he suf- 
fered, the Kingdom of God was not thereby weak- 
ened. He understood that his suffering diminished 
none of the glory of God. He had courage ; he was 
as fearless as any general you have dreamed to 
know. While dangers thundered with loud voices 
around him, he sat unperturbed. Not General 
Grant was more settled and serene than this man. 
He was a statesman ; he saw that the world was to 
be taken for Christ and held, so he wrote the Epis- 
tles. He saw that man's mind was to be formed, and 
civilization begotten, so he wrote the Book of 
Romans, which is the best book of behavior that has 
been written. 

There is our friend Heron. He is one of the 
most delightful demagogues that has risen in the 
last twenty-five years. He seems to believe in him- 
self unreservedly. There is n't any demagogue so 
amusing, there is n't any demagogue so fearful as 
the demagogue that believes his own lies. And 
Professor Heron thought we were all misled and 



54 Eternity in the Heart. 

that all preachers were bad. There are more good 
folks among preachers than any other class of men 
on the earth. Do n't feel bad because you are not 
preachers. You couldn't be. We have got the 
churches, and there is no job for you. Preachers 
have to undergo more stringent criticism of their 
conduct, and more critical vision of their life, than 
any other body of men. I am a Methodist preacher. 
I go to Conference once a year, and the Bishop says, 
"If anybody has got anything against him, let it be 
known :" and anybody can go up there and talk 
against me, — but they do n't do it ! Why ? I wont 
let them. Laying all jest aside, you understand that 
a body of men whose conduct is to be criticised, in 
the necessities of the case, the worst men will drop 
out. Well, here was Professor Heron, and he 
thought that preachers were very bad, and any man 
that got a salary, he was down on. I am down on 
the man that does n't get any salary, — that does n't 
earn anything. Any man that does not work with 
his hands and honestly earn something, that man is 
a poor stick, and he does n't have any right to live. 
And Professor Heron came and told us, in strange 
vagaries, told us how Christ would have done; he 
was sure we were all doing wrong, and that he was 
the only man that knew how to do right. I am sim- 



The; First Christian Triumvirate. 55 

ply saying that the life of Paul showed the differ- 
ence between a mountebank and a statesman. Paul 
clamored not against government; he found fault 
neither with governors nor kings ; he did not try to 
unhinge the doors of society, he let them swing. 
He said people that did n't earn money in hon- 
est toil, ought n't eat. I wish his plans might come 
into operations. He said, tell the truth, be honest, 
be manly men and womanly women, be just, be 
sober, be gracious, be tender, be palatable, helpful, 
hopeful, and if you are poor as poverty, you are 
princely as potentates; if you are here dressed in 
homespun, remember that God hath a loom flashing 
its sunlit shuttles to and fro, and He is weaving a 
garment of the sunlight of Heaven for you to wear ; 
do n't worry ; though your sandals are worn clean 
through, and your feet are blistered, by and by you 
will have wings upon your shoulders, and there will 
be no weary feet with blistered soles. He brought to 
everybody that fellowship with him, that heard him 
speak, that read his letters, he brought wholesome 
self-regard. And here is our friend Heron clamor- 
ing against everything ; and he has come to the log- 
ical sequence of his illogical anarchy, and he has 
come to be a common free lover. I do n't say that 
every man that holds his belief is an anarchist, but 



56 Eternity in the Heart. 

anarchy in one department, leads to anarchy in other 
departments. 

This man Paul was a logician, a statesman, an 
orator, youthful minded, glowing in speech, a poet 
betimes, a writer of great letters : and when the King- 
dom of God that came with might and power and 
glory and dignity and precision and large opinion, 
was at hand, this man came, and as Julius Caesar 
fortified the regions in Trans- Alpine Gaul and seized 
all the north of Europe for Roman speech and 
Roman laws, so this man Paul seized Europe and 
Asia permanently for the Kingdom of God. And 
Paul's word was hope. 

When the soldier has come and gone, and the 
statesman has wrought his work, then comes the 
philosopher. Every age and cause produces its 
philosopher and philosophy. There came Socrates 
and Plato and Aristotle for the great epoch in Greek 
history. There came Hegel for the great scholastic 
epoch in German history, and when the day of 
evolution came into vogue, and all science and 
imagination were affected thereby, and every 
man began to dream what the world might be under 
the touch of this wonder, there came Herbert Spen- 
cer : and while I do not believe his philosophy, I do 
say that anybody who reads Herbert Spencer's syn- 



fH3 First Christian Triumvirate. 57 

thetic philosophy, if he has a grain of sense, and 
imagination, and admiration for the great powers 
of the human mind, must marvel at the expan- 
siveness of a mind like Herbert Spencer's. And as 
Peter was the soldier of the Christian system, and 
Paul the statesman of the Christian system, so John 
was the philosopher of the Christian system. Pie 
was deliberate. Peter ran to the Sepulcher and 
went right in; John ran, and stooped, and 
looked in, and said, "He is risen," and believed His 
Gospel. He was a man who weighed things. So 
this tender-hearted son, this sweet lover of Christ, 
this man whose voice was as sweet as the ripple of 
silver waters on a sunny shore, this man who leaned 
his head upon his Master's breast, this man to whom 
Jesus gave His Mother at the last and said, "She is 
your mother now, seeing she is sonless; be you her 
son, seeing I am gone; stay you with her, keep her 
to the last" (and so he did), — this man with his 
deliberateness, with his sweetness, with his hope in 
God, with great faith in the Master, with an inviola- 
ble and illimitable love, this man found out that the 
great Gospel was LOVE. And if you will read the 
philosophy of John, as you read his Gospel and let- 
ters and Book of Revelation, you will be amazed to 
see how the man unrolls the scroll of his wondrous 



58 Eternity in the Heart. 

dreaming, — "The Gospel is LOVE," that is what he 
is saying. He saw that the Cross of Christ was the 
sign of the love of God; he saw that the Christ of 
God was a sure testimonial to man that God had n't 
forgotten the earth; so he kept on singing, "Love, 
love, love." 

Did you ever hear a mother singing to her child ? 
(She has but one.) Did you ever sit in the twilight 
on the porch and hear a woman on the inside sing- 
ing to her babe? What is she singing about? O, 
LOVE. She hugs the babe to her heart, she leans 
over it and calls it endearing names, she says, 
"Sleep, baby, sleep;" she takes the little hand and 
puts it against her cheek, she puts her arms close 
around it, she hears it moaning a little, and she says, 
"Sleep, baby, sleep;" one thing she thinks, one 
thing she sings, one thing in waking or sleeping, 
love. Now this man John is of this sort, always 
talking about love. 

"In the beginning was the word." He begins 
with the source of all things ; he is the philosopher. 
I affirm here and now, if anybody will read the do- 
ings of Peter and Paul and John, he will find such a 
splendid series of endeavors intertwining themselves 
together like the interlocked fingers of your hands 



The First Christian Triumvirate. 59 

as to make him marvel. Peter hath clamored in his 
movement like the hammering* march of marauding 
armies. Paul, with his seamed forehead, with his 
eyes flashing like stars in the dark skies at night, he 
is planning for the coming of the Kingdom of God. 
This man John is telling - how these things came to 
be. He is saying that God was love; so He loved 
the earth so much that He gave His only begotten 
Son that He might climb up Calvary's Mountain; 
that He might clutch His arms about the Cross ; that 
He, by the grace of God, might taste death for every 
man. If you will listen to John, you will hear his 
voice break; he is no aesthetic, remote philosopher, 
but you will find his voice breaks, and you will hear 
his stylus drop from his hand, and his face is buried 
in his arms, and he is sobbing; and if you say, 
"What ails you, man ?" he will say, "I am thinking 
of the love that passes the love of women, — He 
loved us so !" Peter was crucified, head downward, 
for the cause of Christ; so died one soldier. Paul 
was beheaded outside of his prison window on a 
bright day when the bewildering sunshine filled all 
the streets and alleyways of great Rome ; so died a 
statesman. And old John, ninety-eight years old 
and past, stooped, winter-white, frail, thinking on 



60 Eternity in the Heart. 

the past, — not quite able to grasp all the present, 
but altogether able to grasp all the past, because, as 
we grow old, the near seems remote, and the remote 
seems near, and we remember our childhood, and 
forget our to-days and yesterday, — and this man, 
stooped, and very gray, and quite senile, and with 
his voice quavering like the voice of childhood, by 
and by dies; and his disciples come over, and call 
him by a hundred names of beauty, and fold his 
hands on the breast, and kiss him on the lips and 
cheek, and smooth back his white hair, and call him 
"Beloved of God," and put him away in the burial 
place with the sign of the Cross above him, and a 
white dove on the marble cross. Three men there 
were, Peter and Paul and John ; and Peter was faith, 
and Paul was hope, and John was love, these three. 
"Now abideth faith, hope, and love, — these three." 
But I call you to witness that these three men had 
not three messages, but one. They were subalterns, 
they were not chief officers ; they knew Whom they 
had believed. The sang one song, made one music, 
pronounced one name, shadowed forth one amazing 
glory. It is as if three instruments in the hand of 
skilled masters, played one tune, — so these three 
men, Peter and Paul and John, said one word and 



The First Christian Triumvirate. 6i 

discoursed one blessed harmony: and when Paul 
was ready to die, he said, "I have fought the fight, 
and the time of my departure is at hand ;" and when 
Peter was ready to die, he spake of the "inheritance 
of the glory of the saints of God;" and when John 
was ready to die, he said, "Jesus says, 'Behold I 
come quickly,' " — and the man's feet ran out to meet 
him like a lover to meet the one he loves, and he 
said, "Even so, Lord, Jesus, come quickly." 

And the Kingdom of God is among us, and there 
are disciples for Peter, and for Paul and for John: 
and you are Peter, and you are Paul, and you are 
John. You have a place. Do your service. Find 
your vocation, love it. Work for Him. And when 
your lips are blue, and the room grows dark, and to 
your dim and dying eyes the lights burn low, your 
dull lips shall whisper, "Christ, Christ;" and when 
people come nigh and lean their ears to your slow- 
moving lips to hear the words you say, they shall 
hear you say this, this only — not what King Lear 
said when his faltering lips were muttering their 
last weird story, and he whispered, "Cordelia," — 
not what the faltering, dying lips of Napoleon whis- 
pered forth, "Head of the army:" but when your 
lips stammer, and your sight is dim, and your hands 



62 Eternity in the; Heart. 

are cold, and grasp and can not find the things they 
grasp for, and a thousand lights have vanished in 
your sky, and dipped into the dull glooms of night, 
and human voices pass beyond you and you can not 
hear them any more and need not, your poor 
dying lips shall stammer, — not "Head of the army," 
not "Cordelia," but your lips shall stammer, "Christ, 
Christ, Christ." 



III. 

"BUT WITHOUT FAITH." 

PRAYER. 

O, LORD, GOD, we thank Thee that men may put 
their hands in the hands of God, and become mighty. 
We thank Thee that Thou hast plenty of room for plenty 
of workmen, and that Thy job is not yet done; there are 
shavings still upon Thy bench; there are boards yet to be 
smoothed; there are anvils yet to be hammered on; there 
are instruments yet to be framed: and here we are, and 
here Thou art, and here the anvil is, and here is the 
place where Thou art doing business, and Thou hast work 
that is big for all of us, and Thou art trusting all of us. 
Let us not fail Thee. Let us go to Thy business, and 
do Thy work, and love the one Christ, and serve the 
common cause, and glorify the common Master, and sing 
the common song; so that hereafter in the morning of 
God, we shall come to sing the psalm of the angels of 
God, "Now unto Him that hath loved us„ and zvashed 
us in His own precious blood, to Him be glory and honor 
and dominion and power, forever and forever" Give us 
that song here; so we shall have learned it before we 
come to that great and goodly company, and shall not 
stumble there but be acquainted with it, and sing it as if 
we had been singing in the choir of Heaven a thousand 
years, we ask, for Jesus' sake. Amen, 



63 



64 Eternity in the Heart. 



"But without faith, it is impossible to please God." 
— Heb. xi, 6. 

And for the matter of that, without faith it is 
impossible to please man. We make strange of a 
good many things that occur in the economy of 
what we call GRACE, that we make not strange of 
in the economy of what we call LIFE. As a plain 
matter of fact, God is always doing things in large 
fashion after the same general pattern. This is 
what the doctrine of Evolution means if it means 
anything. God has some lesser garments, some 
larger garments, and some larger garments yet: 
He cuts them all out ; the cloth is all His ; He wove 
it all in His loom; He planned every garment ever 
fashioned. He makes the stars, the lesser and the 
larger; He builds satellites and meteors, He builds 
worlds and suns : He is the chief architect. If He 
wants to build a little house, I reckon He can, can't 
He? If He wants to build a palace, I reckon there 
is no one to hinder Him, is there? If He wants to 
build a house of stated design, can't He do it ? Who 
is to stop Him ? If He wants to build a palace out 
of pure gold, who is to hinder God from doing it? 
He has the gold, and the mechanics and the artifi- 



"But Without Faith." 65 

cers and the models, they are all His. Who is to 
hinder ? 

I lay this charge (and I think it a grievous one), 
at the door of godless philosophies, that they for- 
eignize us to our own heart. Anybody who loses 
God's voice, loses his own. Where there is no God, 
there is no life for the soul. You can not kill God 
and stay alive yourself. I serve notice that if you 
slaughter God, you slaughter your own soul; when 
you murder Him, you assassinate yourself. 

We may reason up to God from who we are. 
We may find out somethings about God from what 
we are. We may climb on the ladder-way of human- 
ity up toward God, — He is like us. O my soul, say 
it with solemnity, yet with holy laughter, God is 
like we are, — because the great truth lieth still the 
same, WE ARE FASHIONED AFTER GOD. 
If you can get man well acquainted with manhood, 
you will get man somewhat acquainted Godhood. 
If you will find the utter deeps of human life, if 
you will scale the splendid acclivities to which 
human life can climb, if you will see the superb 
audacities of human spirits when their blood is in- 
terfused with the blood of God, then you shall begin 
to reckon what sort of life God is, and what sort of 
a love God hath. 
5 



66 Eternity in the: Heart. 

These people who by their philosophies rob us 
of a God, have left us in the dark. They are like 
men who invite us out into the gloom and then snuff 
our candles out: they would not let the poor flame 
and smoke mix together, but smote them from our 
hands and left us altogether in the dark. The poet 
says, "We rise on stepping-stones of our dead selves 
to higher things." True, but there is a larger truth 
that by humanity as a ladder-way, a man may mount 
up into his conception of God. 

The worlds are not foreign to us. We would 
feel at home in other stars than ours. On the planet 
Venus, on the planet Mars, on the planet Neptune, 
you would not think you were on a foreign shore, 
you would think you had landed on some bleak, 
lone coast of this old world, or that you had come to 
the Antarctic Circle, or to where the barren wastes 
of the Sahara toss their yellow dust in your face 
and bruise your forehead by their smoke and fur- 
nace heat. If there had been a new star discovered, 
and the discoverer says, "It is all new. There is 
no land like ours, no river ways, no water courses, 
no leap of tide and lift of waters with their surly 
laughter, no clouds to float in the far air, for it hath 
no air in which the clouds may float," — don't you 
think if anybody told you such a story, you should 



"But Without Faith." 67 

be altogether lost? You would have no method of 
approach, no key to unlock its mystery. But if 
somebody says, "We have found a new star in the 
sky like this star on which we dwell ; there are great 
mountains lifting furrowed heights, there are vast 
crevasses crowded with snows, there are lofty alti- 
tudes where the winters never balm toward spring- 
time; there are green valleys where there is the 
swaying -of the tree boughs, and the puff and smoke 
of perfume in the spring-time, and the undulations 
of the wheat fields leaping an eager sea of green," — 
and you say, "It is like the home land ; like the 
purling of the brooks where I used to run and 
play." God means people to be able to track 
themselves through the universe by the path He 
hath already made ; and God Almighty means man 
to get acquainted with Himself because He has put 
us here. 

We are familiar with our own hearts and with 
the hearts of others. We have seen other people's 
lives, and other people's troubles ; we have seen dis- 
asters that have come in the tragedy of other folks' 
experience; we have seen the grief of the widow 
and of the fatherless and motherless, and of the be- 
reaved ; we have seen lonely, terrorized people whom 
distress had bruised worse than the attrition of bat- 



68 Eternity in the Heart. 

tie or the crowding- of the great throng. We know 
that somewhere God lives and moves because we 
have seen the same order of life and movement. 
Did you ever see a man, and you looked at him, — as 
you passed him on the street, and you looked at him 
quickly, and you knew you had never seen him be- 
fore, but you seemed to vaguely remember him, his 
face seemed strangely familiar, and then you re- 
called that you had seen a pencil sketch of him, — 
not a newspaper sketch, I reckon no man could 
recognize a man from a newspaper sketch, — but a 
pen and ink or pencil sketch, — did you ever see a 
thing like that, and you recognized the person, and 
you say, "Did n't I see a picture of you in such a 
person's house? I knew you from your picture." 
It is quite possible we could know ourselves in God's 
remotest star, and on the farthest shores of the uni- 
verse: and it might be, a man or woman could so 
habituate himself to divine issues and concourse of 
holy notions, and to the drift and tides of holy pos- 
sibilities, as that, somewhere, far off in the atmos- 
phere of calm where no tempests rage, and where no 
spit of hail comes, and no wild winter freezes the 
blossoms hanging on the flower, it might be we 
could still feel quite at home because we had ac- 
climated our life on earth to the eternal life in 



"But Without Faith." 69 

Heaven. Let it not seem strange to anybody that 
without faith it is impossible to please God, for what 
we do know is that without faith it is impossible to 
please man. I am not here to say that God is a 
larger man, but that man is a lesser God. I am say- 
ing that God kindled the lamp of life ; He poured the 
oil into the bowl, and put the wick in place, and 
trimmed it well, and set it aflame from off the altars 
of the skies. It is God's glory, we are like Him. 

If it be true we are fashioned after Him, that 
we bear His likeness, — though we are so impecu- 
nious still we are fashioned after the amazing glory 
of the opulent God, — what sort of men and women 
ought we to be ? We are in tatters, but we have the 
King's purple garments on still. We are withered, 
and our hands reach and grasp, but still we have 
something of the amazing might of God. People 
sometimes in their dreams, see things in dim per- 
spective. It is only thus that men and women are 
fashioned after God: and God is omniscient, — and 
sometimes in rare and radiant moments when the 
sky is clear and affable to vision, we can see beyond 
our limits. And man in his better estate, has a touch 
of omnisciency himself. You need not talk about 
spiritualism with its maneuvres, its sitting in the 
dark, its mysterious voices, and all its deludedly 



70 Eternity in the; Heart. 

foolish things, — it can never compare with the 
phenomena of human life. We are reminiscences of 
God. He has made us like himself. We are not 
oceans, but we can hold the rain drops of the heavens 
yet ; we are not in longevity equal to the angels, but 
by and by when we have had the refreshment of 
blood from God, we shall run on forever, — we are 
fashioned after God. I call everybody to witness 
that is why it is comely to be a woman, that is why 
it is honorable to be a man, because manhood and 
womanhood are the glass in which the face of God 
is reflected as the sea reflects the stars; and as on 
the tumbling tumult of the great waters, the stars 
that are reflections, laugh back to the stars in the 
sky; so in the tumult of human life, the soul leaps 
and laughs and calls back to God, "You made me, 
I am your son, I am your daughter ; I have learned 
my language after you." When a man prays, he is 
talking back to God in His own speech ; when from 
hitherto dumb lips, there comes the voice of 
prayer caling upon God, God listens to it, and knows 
it is his own child speaking. A man and woman 
know their little child because its voice is strangely 
like their own ; and when God hears a man praying, 
He stops- and lays down the needle He is threading 
to do great sewings with, puts down the sword He 



"But Without Faith." 71 

is sharpening to win great battles with, lays down 
the spade with which He is to level mountains, lays 
them down, and says, "Why, I heard my child's 
voice; and in the babble of his prayer, and in the 
pathos of his petition, I know it is my child's voice : 
he is talking after me." 

I say that anybody who lets infidelity bivouac 
with him, anybody that lets infidelity take him by 
the hand, is a poor fool. He is a bankrupt in life ; 
he has overdrawn his account ; he has gone into his 
own bank and used up his assets. Impossible to 
please God without faith, why? Because in the 
providence of God, we are made in God's likeness, 
and it is impossible to please man without faith. 

What I plead for is that we be as reasonable 
with God as we are with man, — that we do not make 
religion unreasonable, but rational ; if you deal with 
God as you deal with man, you will get on well with 
God, and if you know how to get along well with 
man, you will know how to get along with God. 
The same principles honorably lived up to will get 
you along affably with human life, and with the 
Eternal God with whom you are to dwell. 

Without faith, you can not get along with any- 
body. It is well to fae careful, but it is possible to 



72 Eternity in the Heart. 

be too suspicious. People do n't want to go to the 
door for fear somebody might come and stab them. 
They say, "Who knows who is at the door? Who 
knows what they might want? There can't any- 
body tell what they might be planning," — and you 
go to the door and look out through the glass, and 
you can not see anything but the shoulders of a man. 
and you say, "Who 's there ?" If you are a woman, 
that is right. Sometimes when you go to some- 
body's house, you find the door locked and bolted 
and chained; sometimes the door is opened just 
about this wide ( ), and the people inside say, 
"Who's there ?" and they say, "No, not to-day, not 
to-day," and you can not get in. I am saying it is 
quite possible to be too suspicious. Some people are 
too little suspicious, but many are too suspicious. 
Some people are so eager to appear astute and keen 
whether they are or not, that they are keen like the 
winter's wind in February ; they feel that they must 
always be alert, that they must always expect evil. 
Some people are so eager to be keen that they turn 
people to liars, they always believe the worst, and 
expect the dastardly and infamous. Some people 
are so eager to be thought keen readers of human 
nature, that they bar their lives with bars of steel, 
and shut the whole world out, and leave everybody 



"But Without Faith." 73 

out in the winter's cold, and let them shiver and die 
alone. 

What life needs, is faith in life. There are more 
people to be believed than you and I have believed. 
There are not so many liars as we thought there 
were. We live with ourselves too much, — why do n't 
you go out with more honest people? I see dis- 
honest people, but there are a great many honest 
people. You can not appeal to folks without you 
believe in them. You can not teach your child he 
is an unreliable child, and then believe in him. I 
have seen parents spoil their children by talking to 
them this way; "Now, Mary, did you tell Mamma 
the truth, DID you?" — and that foolish woman has 
put into her child's head that she expects her to be a 
liar. It is time enough to believe your child is a 
liar when you know she is taking after you and do- 
ing as you do. No school teacher, no preacher, no 
lawyer, no newspaper man, no business man, NO- 
BODY has any business to raise a question about 
people's veracity, until people give themselves a 
sort of unholy flavor of being evil. It is not right 
to suspect people : faith will do more. Doubt will 
wreck many a life. Without faith it is impossible 
to please any man. You can not go to a man and 
say, "Look here ! I have full confidence in you that 



74 Eternity in the Heart. 

you are an absolute liar. You can not be relied upon 
to do what you say. I have no more notion you 
would pay a bill if you had the money, than any- 
thing in the world. I think you are dishonest. I 
would not leave my pocket book around where you 
were under any consideration." If you should talk 
that way, how long do you think it would take you 
to generate in that man, self-respect and manly qual- 
ities ? Somebody has got to believe in you and trust 
in you. 

God's infinite mercy is that most of us have 
those who believe in us. It may be some mother who 
loves her boy half to death but not wholly. Some 
mother puts her arms about her boy and says, "Son, 
you are all right." Sometimes she has poor cause 
to believe in him, more's the pity. It seems to me 
if I were a boy with a mother, I would let my right 
hand forget its cunning, and my left hand forget its 
nerve and might, before I would let my mother's 
hope in me, my mother's belief in me, my mother's 
expectation for me, die. O young man, if you are 
here, keep your life very clean, — your mother be- 
lieves in you; keep your life very beautiful, — your 
father believes in you. There is an old man yonder 
somewhere, and he is thinking about you, and thinks 
may be you are in God's house, but he does not quite 



"But Without Faith." 75 

know, and he is thinking about you, he is thinking 
about his boy and wondering where he is. I pray 
God he is here. This is a safe place to be. Folks 
don't get drunken in God's house. Folks don't 
get lecherous in God's house, no. Folks do n't get 
foul-intentioned in God's house, no. Folks don't 
carry away evil principles from God's house, no ! I 
defy any man or woman, — did you ever get any evil 
in God's house? Did you every carry away any 
wickedness from the house of God? Did you ever 
learn infamy from this good Book? Did you ever 
hear any song sung by lips of choir or congrega- 
tion that made life harder for you, or virtue more 
difficult? You did not! Somebody believes in 
you: may that stir you up to higher manliness and 
womanliness. If there is a woman here who finds 
life hard, living on a pittance, if she sees her gar- 
ments getting strangely seedy though she has turned 
them over and over again with woman's deft fingers, 
remember this, — POVERTY IS NEVER 
SHAMEFUL, BUT VICE IS DEVILISH. 

Without faith it is impossible to please man, — 
that is the great truth of life. Why should it be 
thought strange that without faith it would be im- 
possible to please God? The only way to make 
men of men is to believe in them. I remember a 



y6 Eternity in the Heart. 

man, God bless him! God BLESS him! I remem- 
ber a man who, when I was a lad beginning my col- 
lege course, somehow believed in me; and he said, 
"Look here, young fellow, you better go to col- 
lege/' — and I said, "Well, where's the trick to do it 
with?" And he said, "Look here, young man, I 
would like to invest a little in you," — and I said, 
"Don't invest much," — but he said, "Look here, 
young man, if you need money, you come to me 
and you can get it." Well, now, in point of fact, I 
never got much money from that man, and in point 
of privacy of statement, every cent I got from him I 
paid back, which is more than some people can say, 
— but it was not that this man loaned me money, 
but it was this gracious thing that there was a man 
somethere, there was a man who believed in me. 
Have you somebody who said when you began busi- 
ness, I will lean a little your way?" Did you read 
about Rockafeller who one day tried to get the in- 
credible loan from a bank of two thousand dollars. 
He was as scared as I would be if I went to ask. for 
that much. And the people did n't much more think 
of lending to him than they would to me. Two 
thousand dollars ! And the shrewd business man, 
the bank president, looked him over and said, "Look 
here, Rockafeller, I like your looks, and I will loan 



"But Without Faith." 77 

it to you :" and he went away with the check in his 
fist and his fist in his pocket, and feeling as frisky 
as a colt on a spring morning with fresh pastures 
before him and his appetite keen. Somebody be- 
lieves in you. Suppose a man married a woman 
and he said, "Now, look here! You mustn't go 
down to the store unless I am with you. You mean 
well, but you do n't know how to get along." She 
says, "Can't I go down and get a bunnit, can't I go 
down and buy a dress?" "No," he says, "you can't 
buy a dress. My father bought my mother's things, 
and I am going to buy your things." I think it is 
deplorable when a man goes around buying his 
wife's things. The order of Providence is that a 
woman should buy her own things and pay for them 
with a man's money. But suppose a man would 
talk that way to his wife. He says, "Now, Jennie, 
you mean well, but you have no judgment; you 
do n't know what you ought to have to pay. I think 
a great deal of you and of myself, and between the 
two, I like myself better than I like you, but I can 
not trust you with money. I will give you a nickle 
a week, but I can not trust you with more." Sup- 
posing a thing like that, how long would it take to 
change the girl from girl to woman? How long 
will it take a woman to learn to be womanly and 



78 Eternity in the Heart. 

to be mistress of her own household if she is always 
treated as a child ? Do n't you know the very initia- 
tive in changing that girl of sixteen into a matronly 
woman who can command her own household and 
can order things as they ought to be ordered, is 
that that man should trust her? 

What would you think of a woman who would 
say to her husband, "Now, Henry, you are a dear 
(the only dear I have now), and Henry, when you 
go down town, I will go down town with you." 
And he says, "Why?" And she says, "Why, I can 
not trust you. Some girl might look at you, and 
you might look at some girl." "Well," he said, 
now, I won't," and the man spunks up. That 
is the way a man shows his independency of charac- 
ter: but that is all it amounts to. He spunks up, 
and then he spunks down. But I always maintain 
that a man ought to spunk up, because he shows he 
still has a little knowledge of what he ought to do. 
He ought to act as if he were master of his own 
household whether he is or not. But how long 
would it take that man to become the man he ought 
to be? 

You have got to have faith in people and give 
them some sort of lee-way to go away from home; 
you have got to believe that people's word is believ- 



"But Without Faith." 79 

able; you have got to believe somehow in folks, or 
you can never make the best and noblest folks out 
of them. William of Orange secured his throne be- 
cause he believed in people. He walked among 
traitors as if they had been patriots, — believed in 
people, and acted as if they had noble impulses and 
could be relied upon, and asserted that those im- 
pulses could be invoked by being called upon; and 
the manhood he affirmed to be in souls, he declared 
could be called out, as the slumbering blossoms can 
be called out by the springtime and the calling of 
the rain drops and the shining of the sun. You 
can not please people without faith. 

What we are needing to-day is to have faith in 
human kind. The general must have faith in the sol- 
dier and the soldier must have faith in the general. If 
the soldier have faith in his commander, he will 
obey any command. Life runs by faith. You can 
not succeed in business except you have faith. To 
get on with folks, to enter into their confidence, to 
become co-operative with their enterprises, you must 
have faith : and I call you to witness still, that with- 
out faith it is not strange that it is impossible to 
please God. 

It is impossible to please God without faith, be- 
cause religion is deeper than what you do. Relig- 



80 Eternity in the; Heart. 

ion is much deeper than the things you say. Your 
hand does this, or refrains ; your lips say these words 
or refrain : but your words are not you, your hands' 
doings are not you, the echoings of your voice are 
not you, — life is deeper than that, life is faith. What 
your faith is, you are ; what your faith achieves, you 
achieve. If faith be strong, magnetic, puissant as the 
angels of God, it will have a wonderful hand, it will 
have a quick eye, it will make the sky clean, and 
drive the fogs and smoke away. 

You must have faith, or you can not achieve 
nobility and worth. We are not here to argue that 
religion is invisible, because religion is a motive of 
conduct, that is, religion is a motive of life, and 
life becomes conduct. I am not here to argue for 
you and with you that you come into Christian ex- 
perience because experience will do this or that or 
still the other, but I am here to argue that when 
Christian experience comes with faith in God, all 
good things come natively, as the blooms come na- 
tively to the trees in springtime when the saps run 
through the trunks. Faith is necessary, is basilar, 
and must be in your constitution. It is not a ques- 
tion of what you do or what you do not do. One 
man does his work well, honestly, faithfully, con- 
tinuously. Another man's work is of like sort so 



"But Without Faith." S.i 

far as you can discover ; both are accurate, both do 
good work, but one works because he is trained, the 
other because he is true. God wants truth at the 
core of the world. God wants the fountain in the 
world's life to spout pure waters; and He says, — 
not, "Where do you go to church?" not, whether 
you are a Presbyterian or Roman Catholic or Meth- 
odist, not "Where do you belong?" or "How long 
have you been a church member?" None of these 
things is basilar. But the great quality God sets 
store by is, HAVE YOU FAITH? Do you lean 
God's way? If you fall, would you fall toward 
Him ? If you went into battle, would you fight for 
Him? If you rose in the night and walked in the 
dark would you walk His way where you thought 
his voice was calling you? O Beloved, hear me! 
"Without faith it is impossible to please God." Faith 
that is in the character gives virility which by and 
by ultimates in conduct. Without it, you can not 
live a loyal life; without it, you can not do your 
work, or pray your prayer, or serve your day, or 
live with high fidelity to every supreme issue of life ; 
without it, you can not do any best thing greatly. 
With it, all good things will become you. Does 
glory become the cloud ? It is because the sun is in it. 
Does splendor become the sunset? It is because the 
6 



82 Eternity in the; Heart. 

sun glows through the cloud. It is because God is in 
a man or woman that all great moods become nat- 
ural as words when the tongue and lip and teeth 
combine to say the words you mean to say. I plead 
for faith in God, because without faith, you can 
not please him. 

I remember to have read of an artist who worked 
all day on his picture; it was all his life, all his 
thought, all his work. And sometimes he came to 
find when he wakened in the morning, that some- 
body had been painting on his picture. He knew 
not who it was, and could not discover; but 
morning by morning, his picture grew, and some 
new splendor would shine out on the canvas. And 
then it was found out that this painter was so in- 
tent upon his work, that at night he rose from his 
bed and went where his colors were, and found his 
palette, and went to the easel, and stood there in his 
somnolence, and painted, and put a new light in the 
eyes, and new beauty on the lips, and a new grace 
in the poise, — in the night, he did it; and by and 
by, tired, with eyes that saw not, yet seeing, he 
would go and put his palette down and lay the brush 
aside, and go to bed and go to sleep again. O Be- 
loved, that is what faith will do, for it is deeper 
than conduct. It sets the feet to going in the dark ; 



"But Without Faith." 83 

it sets the eyes to seeing when the eyes are shut. 
Don't you think that is a good thing, and holy, to 
see when your eyes are shut? Did you ever sit and 
fold your hands and shut your eyes, and you saw a 
woman standing at a door, and watching? Who 
was it? Your MOTHER looking for you. You 
shut your eyes, — you woman with your many cares, 
and your little children for whom garments must be 
made ; -you woman with your large family for whom 
a small income must be made to do; you woman 
with your ringers bloody with needle pricks, — you 
shut your eyes, and you see your mother who used 
to love you and cradle you and kiss you and fondle 
you ; and you tore yourself away from her arms one 
day, and you looked back, and saw her leaning out 
toward you with her dear, sweet face, — you would 
better get ready to see her in Heaven, I reckon. You 
remember about her, and though your eyes are shut, 
you see. 

Do you know, when you have faith, it is possible 
to please God when your eyes are closed, because 
when you seem not to be thinking, you are thought- 
ful. It is possible to please God when you have 
faith, because the AUTOMATIC MOVEMENTS 
of your life swin out God's way. A man starts out 



84 Eternity in the Heart. 

a path and goes swinging along right boldly, look- 
ing neither to right nor left, and thinking deeply, 
and you run against him and say, "Where are you 
going?" And he looks up and says, "Well, for the 
life of me, I can't tell," but he is going the path he 
meant to go. 

Life is a partnership when at its best, and part- 
ners can not get along unless they have mutual con- 
fidence. In other words, faith in oneself and in 
other people, is absolutely essential to getting on in 
the world. When Grant massed his armies and 
swung them abreast and gave the command "For- 
ward!" the Union was saved, and the battle initia- 
tive done. When a certain great duke in England 
framed a plan whereby the Cabinet should always 
be of one party instead of two then all the offi- 
cious quarreling ended, and the government began 
to move as if all its wheels were oiled. It is abso- 
lutely essential that people who are to be partners, 
have unified action when at work. Have faith, — if 
you have faith in God, you and God will get on well 
together; you will know His plan, and He will ap- 
prove yours. If you have faith in God, there will 
be no loss in friction, no waste of energy. If you 
have faith, you will find your energies will bring 
results according to your exertion ; you will find the 



"But Without Faith." 85 

remunerative return. Have faith, because "With- 
out faith, it is impossible to please God." 

I wonder, who would not like to please God. 
Is there anybody who would not care to please the 
King of the earth ? Kings can, if you kneel at their 
throne, make knights of you. They can make you 
warriors for their cause. God can do better than 
that. He can give you a clean heart. He can for- 
give your sins. Who would not want to please 
God? 

I know a little lassie who sews, and she is no 
great sewer, though I am no judge of that, but 
she comes in and brings her papa pen-wipers, — 
funny little things, they are kind of jokes. Little 
bits of ones, sometimes red, sometimes blue, some- 
times three or four folds, sometimes only one, — 
curious little things. Pen wipers, — why, her father 
has wipers enough to wipe all the pens in Chris- 
tendom. He could lend pen-wipers to everybody in 
this city and have plenty left. Did he ever have 
too many? No. Did he ever say, "I want no 
more?" Did he ever say, "Why, you little body, 
why do n't you do something better ?" Did he ever 
say that? NO. Did he ever say, "If I could not 
do any better than that, I would not do at all ?" No. 



86 Eternity in the Heart. 

Did he ever say, "Stay your hand, and do n't make 
any more?" No! In the dresser, there are pen 
wipers, and on the table there are penwipers, and 
under the blotters there are pen wipers, all around 
are pen-wipers, but never one too many. The father 
is pleased with them, not because he needs them, no ; 
not because he asked for them, no : but because SHE 
made them. That is enough. 

Do n't you think it possible to please God by 
bringing him something? You can not bring God 
things He don't want, if you have faith. All you 
do, He will take. He will never laugh at you. You 
know, sometimes people laugh at you and make 
sport at you. You have sometimes seen the waiters 
in a hotel wink at each other when you ordered pie 
for breakfast. If you wanted pie for breakfast, 
why could n't you have it ? I have some- 
times gone into a sleeper and have seen people 
sitting there who had been there before me, and 
they looked at each other as if to say, "Huh! An- 
other Indianian heard from." I don't say I much 
liked to be laughed at, but I never let on, never 
turned up my nose, never got huffy, just walked as 
if I had bought the car and let them sit in it. But 
we do n't enjoy it. But, Beloved, God never laughs 
at us, never makes sport of us. He never makes 



"But Without Faith." 87 

quips at what we do. If you have faith in Him, — 
everything you do, He likes it. 

The boys down at Rugby used to try to please 
Dr. Arnold. The boys at Baliol College used to 
try to please Dr. Jowett. The boys over at Wil- 
liams college used to try to please that greatest of 
American college presidents, Mark Hopkins. The 
soldiers who inarched in Mary Antony's legions used 
to try to please Mark Antony. Do n't you think it 
might be worth while to try to please God? He 
is the best school master, — better than Thomas Ar- 
nold, better than Jowett of Baliol, better than Hop- 
kins of Williams; better than any general who ever 
marshalled forces. Better than Mark Antony, bet- 
ter than Napoleon the electrical, better than Grant 
the imperturbable and mighty ; better than Sherman 
or Marborough. 

God Almighty is captaining the world's army; 
He is leading* the world's forces ; He is looking after 
you; you are in His ranks. Don't you think it 
might be worth while to try to please him? Hear 
me ! ''Without faith, it is impossible to please God, 
— but Beloved, WITH faith, you can. We have 
something He wants. We have something He 
needs. He is looking our way wistfully. I think a 
wistful look in the eyes, is the sweetest, saddest 



88 Eternity in the Heart. 

thing that ever brought tears to the cheek. Hear 
me now ! God looks at these women here to-night, 
wistfully ; He wants their best service. Some women 
have no spirituality. They care for the latest thing 
that froths in society. They care more for an invi- 
tation to a party than they care for a front room 
in Heaven. Oh, God is looking wistfully at you. 
Oh, look His way, answer Him. Say, "I will do thy 
will, I will love thy pleasure, I will walk thy way, I 
will do whatsoever thou wilt have me do, I will 
please thee." 

God is looking wistfully your way, young man, 
with your strength on you, and He wants your 
strength ; He wants your to-morrows, He wants your 
accumulation of energies, your growing genius, your 
unknown potencies ; He is looking wistfully at you. 

Man of maturer years, God is looking wistfully 
at you. You are dulling your finer senses, you are 
ruining your own life, you are flinging a baleful 
shadow about you in whose darkness you yourself 
must walk to your tomb. 

God is looking wistfully at you, old man who 
have wasted your years. You are like a withered 
leaf; you have no virtue, no holy purpose in your 
life; you swear when you ought to pray; you are 
angry when you ought to be humble. Hear me, 



"But Without Faith." 89 

God is looking your way, wistfully. Without faith, 
you can not please Him, but with faith, you can. 

May God bless you and make you eager to please 
Him ; may you fall in faith with Him ; may you hear 
His step, and keep step with Him; may you take 
his hand and walk by His side as a little child walks 
by his father's side. He will help you over the 
rough places ; He will carry you over the deep 
ravines. Sometimes, He will carry you on His 
shoulder; sometimes, He will put you under His 
arm ; sometimes He will lay you on His breast when 
you are sleepy, — but He will keep you, and present 
you "without spot or wrinkle or any such thing be- 
fore His presence with exceeding joy." Amen. 



IV. 
GOD ENDURING BAD MANNERS. 

PRAYER. 

WE bless God for our heavenly prospect, and we bless 
God also for our earthly enjoyment. We bless God that 
zve Christians are happy folks: we do n't go through the 
world sad and disconsolate, but we go through the world 
glad because we have a chance to live, and glad because zve 
have a chance to work, and glad because zve have a chance 
to work for somebody: and then, after all, the great 
Somebody for whom we do our utmost labor is the great 
God. 

If our path be thorny, we do not mind; if it be slippery, 
we do not so much care; if our toil be hard upon us, if 
all the long day we toil and sweat and rest not, yet all 
the day through, in the midst of our labor, we have the 
consolation of the good Christ, "For one is our Master, 
even Christ. 3 ' 

We thank God that Jesus Christ was a day laborer 
like we are. He was a carpenter, and they called Him 
"The Carpenter's son;" He wore a working man's clothes, 
and He had a working man's hands and they were cal- 
loused in the palm; and when He took our hands betimes, 
we knew those hands of His were fitted to labor as His 
voice was fitted to music. We thank God for this con- 
federation of Christ with our life and with our service. 
We know that He was often tired, and that His hands 
were often grimy with the toil of the day, but we thank 
90 



God Enduring Bad Manners. 91 

God that all the while through He sang a song of triumph, 
and He lived a life of delight. 

O God, make us, we pray Thee, mannerly men and 
women in the knozvledge of Christ. May we have a good 
time as we go through our earth because we have God's 
times and because "our times are in His hands/' May 
every day prove to us a source of consolation and large 
comfort, and growing life and joy to our own hearts be- 
cause it is a source of growing life and joy to other peo- 
ple's heart, and may people say, "How gladly these Chris- 
tians live." 

O Lord, bless all this company. A good many people 
are here, — we know their faces, but we have never known 
their names or met them face to face, or taken their hand 
and said, "What is your name, and where do you live, and 
how is that you come so often?" We have never said that; 
but Thou knowest we have grown to be familiar with 
them, and when we see their faces we are glad to look 
into their eyes. There are so many people we meet, and 
meet no more, and then from them we part. God grant 
afterwhile in God's meeting house in Heaven, we shall 
all of us meet and know each other's names, and take 
each other's arms and walk down the streets of gladness 
to the sound of tireless music. 

O God, get us ready for life here, and then Thou wilt 
have had all the trouble through of getting us ready for 
the life eternal. Equip us for best manhood and woman- 
hood. May our life be so full of service, that our hands 
will have become so accustomed to labor that in Heaven 
we will ask God for something to do. 

Hear our prayer. Help us to all enjoyment of life and 
service: and after awhile, bring us to the Country to 
which we care to go, and let us meet the persons we care 
to meet, and stay in Thy presence forever, we pray Thee 
for Christ's sake, Amen. 



92 Eternity in the; Heart. 



"And about the time of forty years, suffered He 
their manners in the wilderness." — Acts xiii, 18. 

I Think nothing is more irritating to the nerves 
than bad manners and nothing is less justifiable. 
In the long run, good manners are as easy as 
bad manners, for while it may be a good deal harder 
to be mannerly than ill mannerly, when you get 
through with good manners, you are done with 
them; and when you get through with ill manners, 
you are just beginning with them. It may be a tax 
on your spiritual energies to always be suave and 
bland and gentle and delightful, but when you are 
that way, you never have the irritation of having 
to apologize. Apologies come to the ill mannered; 
and apologies, you know from your experience with 
them, are hard work. You go to a man you have n't 
treated very pleasantly, — you met him one day on 
the train, and did n't know who he was, — and by 
and by you find out he is a relative of your wife; 
and what do you do ? Well, you begin to apologize 
to him, — you say, "I am very sorry that I didn't 
know you the other day; I was immersed in busi- 
ness, and thinking about something else; you will 
have to excuse me; I was a little brusk," — Good- 



God Enduring Bad Manners. 93 

ness ! Now if you had behaved well, it would have 
been all right, whether he was related to your wife 
or not. Good manners pay. They pay in solid 
comfort for your own life if you know you have be- 
haved the best you could. 

It is a wise thing to be mannerly; it is a sweet 
thing to be mannerly ; it is what society has a right 
to expect of us; it is what we have a right to ex- 
pect from - ourselves ; it is a palatable method of be- 
having one's self in society. You can not find any- 
body who wants to strive for the prize of being ill 
mannered. Lots of them would get it, but you 
do n't find people striving for that sort of prize, do 
you ? Nobody would care to have the repute of be- 
ing the chiefest boor in the city, — nobody would. 

The Scripture I have read in your hearing, said 
that for forty years, God suffered people's manners. 
He had to do with an ill mannered crew. It is possi- 
ble for people and persons to have bad breeding and 
show it. It is possible for people and persons to 
have good breeding and show it. The Book of God 
is the book of the best breeding ever anybody read. 
The Book of God is the book of the sweetest, most 
wholesome etiquette anybody ever tried to practice 
and put in his life, so he could get it out of his life. 

Now etiquette is a sort of mild aroma to good 



94 Eternity in the: Heart. 

manners. I say "mild," because frequently, it is 
purely superficial : it spreads over the surface of 
things like the air spreads over the surface of the 
earth. Good manners are as deep as the heart ; and 
the heart is the very center of the human spirit: 
and etiquette may be as deep as the skin, and be 
no deeper, and reach no further. I speak no word 
against eitquette, because we ought to be able to 
trace the fine lines in society, just as our eyes ought 
to be able to discriminate the fine lines in an etch- 
ing. It is a poor, ill-trained eye which can not see 
the delicate, rythmical movement of lines that some 
exquisite artist hath cut upon the plate he framed 
to excellency and beauty and delight ; and so it is a 
poor artistic eye for courtesies and amenities that 
hath not trained itself to enjoy as well as to partici- 
pate in the amenities of social usages: but what I 
am saying is, that mere etiquette, or what I will 
call the mere form of manners, does not reach the 
core of life because it does not reach the core of the 
soul. I have known people who were excellent 
judges of how one ought to behave; they knew 
every rule ever given; they practiced all of them: 
you felt they were a sort of walking book on eti- 
quette ; eating at the table, you felt as though they 
were figuring whether the latest was to eat aspara- 



God Enduring Bad Manners. 95 

gus with the fingers or fork ; you did n't know 
whether to spill the bouillon in the dish and drink 
from the dish, or drink it with a spoon, or pass it on, 
or what under the sun you ought to do with it. One 
time I saw an ill-mannered lady put sugar in her 
bouillon. I admired her independency of judgment. 
She had as much right to put sugar in her bouillon 
as you have to put salt in yours. What I mean to 
say is that rules of conduct are concerning things 
that might just as well be the reverse. Good man- 
ners are things which can not be reversed and de- 
cency be maintained, — that is the difference between 
manners and etiquette. Etiquette may pertain to 
things totally non-essential ; manners always pertain 
to things totally essential. You might violate a 
dozen proprieties of the rules of etiquette, and still 
be a lady or a gentleman; you can violate no soli- 
tary propriety of good manners and hope to be con- 
sidered a lady or gentleman. I have known people 
so adept in their etiquette, such exquisite profes- 
sionals in what I will call, rightly behaving, that 
they would have been shocked almost to death to 
have gone out to dinner without a dress suit on; 
but they would get drunk as a fool and look the 
thing they were, in public or in private. I will tell 
you, men and women, it is a good thing to sanctify 



96 Eternity in the; Heart. 

etiquette in your life, but it is a better thing 
to sanctify good manners. We have outgrown 
the usages of past centuries; as civilization 
and religion have marched on, we have outgrown 
our Chesterfield usages. We must be brutes in so- 
ciety no more; we must not play the animal in 
social usages any more : we ought to remember that 
he is master of etiquette who masters it in his heart 
and hath the evidence of manliness or womanliness 
in his life, and not simply the person who will ob- 
serve all the forms of society and conduct, and break 
all the nobilities at a blow and crowd over them 
like a barbarian will walk over diamonds in the 
dust. I, myself, take no stock in that sort of "four- 
hundredism" or that sort of social usage where a 
man must behave beautifully, but where he observes 
no dignified amenities, and where no sweet, high, 
lordly courtesy ever blooms with fragrance in his 
soul. I say the sooner we learn courtesy of heart 
and brain rather than etiquette which is only skin 
deep, the better it will be. A man can go over town 
and drink his fill, and put his entire family to shame, 
and yet that man may be a "social magnate." The 
fewer such social magnates society has, the better it 
is for society. The sooner grown men and women 
are decent, the sooner men and women know be- 



God Enduring Bad Manners. 97 

havior is a thing that flows like living waters flow 
out of the well, so these streams flow out of the deep 
wells of the heart, the better it will be for society. 

Bad manners are abominable; bad etiquette 
might, or might not be. There are a great many 
bad mannered people, — not you or myself, but there 
are some, and I think we ought to know, and we 
do know that any man or woman who deals largely 
with the world, will say there is a good deal of bad 
manners. There is a good deal of bad manners, but 
I will say there are more good manners. I have 
lived awhile, and will confess that the sweet courte- 
sies of life have blest me ten thousand times, I 
have seen the utmost delicacy in attitude and be- 
havior in people whose hands were so crude and so 
stiffened with toil through years and years as that 
they could not bend themselves in the old, prehensile 
fashion of childish hands, — but I have seen those 
poor hands, old, and stiff, and big-knuckled, do such 
dainty deeds. I have seen them close the tired eyes 
death had kissed. I have seen them hold little chil- 
dren's hands hot with fever. I have seen those ill 
shapen fingers hold a baby's hands, so that it seemed 
as if an angel of God had come down for the dying 
child. I call that good manners. O, there is plenty 
of courtesy in the world. I do n't mean to say there 
7 



98 Eternity in the Heart. 

is enough. There is n't enough till every man be- 
comes a gentleman ; there is n't enough courtesy in 
the world till every woman becomes a lady; there 
is n't enough courtesy in the world till every man 
remembers that every other man has rights he is 
bound to respect; there is not enough courtesy in 
the world till every woman remembers that every 
other woman has a reputation as sacred as her own ; 
there is n't enough good manners in the world so 
long as one business competitor will use dishonora- 
ble methods, or one preacher will speak slightingly 
of another ; there is n't enough courtesy in the world 
so long as one woman will deal in innuendo about 
another woman : but there is a bounty of good man- 
ners in the world, the world is full of manners. It 
is a beautiful thing for society or for individuals to 
have good manners. We ought to enjoy people's 
manners, they ought to be our delight; they ought 
to come to us like the fragrance off the meadow 
land so that cur hearts may be made glad. 

I was going from Montezuma to Rockville the 
other day, and it was getting toward dusk, and we 
were going along a country road a good way, and 
came to a beautiful place, and the hawthorn was in 
blossom and seemed like snow banks slipping their 
snows down the hillside. All at once there came the 



God Enduring Bad Manners. 99 

flute music of the voice of the whip-poor-will. I 
do n't know what you think of the whipporwill. You 
may think it is unmannerly ? It 's song is so solitary, 
you say it makes you sad? But don't you be 
troubled about being sad. Some people need sad- 
ness of heart more than laughter. Sadness lays the 
dust of your soul like the rain does the dust of the 
road. Sadness is good betimes. I heard that soli- 
tary flute note, — I do n't know whether he knew I 
was there, I do n't know whether he knew I was a 
poor city man, I do n't know whether he knew that 
all the bird call I heard was the night hawk that 
shrieks and strikes the sword of his voice through 
the air, or the bickering of the sparrows as they 
sauce each other morning noon and night, — but any- 
how, he came along the hillside, and dodged be- 
hind the snow drifts of the hawthorns and began to 
flute his music to the stars and me. O, it was beau- 
tiful ! I remember it now. It will cheer me to- 
morrow; and sometimes when I am tired, I will 
hear all that staccato, liquid, clear. Good manners 
are like that, so sweet, so musical, so merciful as 
that they make you glad, and they don't know it. 
That is how people ought to behave. I really sup- 
pose though, that the whipporwill knew the time of 
my coming, that he knew my fine apprehension of 



LofC. 



ioo Eternity in the Heart. 

music, that I once studied for a music master, and 
he set his music box agoing for my delectation; 
but may be he did n't know I was around, — may be 
he didn't; and do you know, I think that is the 
sweetest of all good manners, to talk sweetly 
when folks do n't know you are around. To-morrow 
morning, you will be at breakfast, just you two 
alone, and you have your weekly round-up. You 
make your remarks, you tell your husband what you 
think, and if he gets an opportunity, which probably 
he will not, he will tell you what he thinks. You 
will make divers remarks and observations, and he 
will try to edge in a word here and there, — listen to 
me ! if you found out after you had gotten through, 
or in the midst of the delightful colloquy, there were 
others around, how would you feel ? 

If conversation went on with the highest type 
of good manners, anybody would be welcome to 
hear what was said; but if some of your conversa- 
tion were put in the papers, you would probably 

try to keep it out. "Did you hear about Mrs. ?" 

"No, I didn't hear." "Why didn't you hear it? 
Of course T haven't spoken about it to any one, 
and if I tell you of course it would be private." "O, 
certainly, I would n't tell any one." "Well, if you 
will be certain not to tell," — "Of course not," — 



God Enduring Bad Manners. ioi 

"Well, I heard that she, — but you must not say any- 
thing- about it." "O I would n't say a word about 
it," — I do n't care who you are, or where you came 
from, I don't care if you sprang from the lineage 
of a hundred kings, you are ill mannered, — that is 
what you are, grossly ill mannered ! Do you know, 
I think modern society is in great danger of be- 
coming grossly ill mannered. We make too much of 
other people's business. We talk about other peo- 
ple's affairs too much. As soon as a man's inten- 
tions begin to show, we say, "I '11 be blessed if I 
knew they were engaged. How tickled he is about 
it." "Well," we say, "she 's engaged ! Goodness 
know it 's time. She 's been waiting a long while." 
"Say, did you know Jerusha Pepper 's engaged at 
last ?" "Well, she 's tried hard enough !" What do 
you call that? I call it abominably bad manners. 
(There isn't any woman that couldn't have had 
half a dozen men if she had taken those that offered 
themselves. Some women have to much sense to 
take everything. Women are not old maids 
because they could not help it, but because 
they had too good sense to take any tatterdemalion 
who came their way.) So long as society indulges 
in that kind of conversation, so long is society 
grossly ill mannered. I do n't care if you say it is 



102 Eternity in the Heart. 

mere talk, — your manners are abominable. If you 
would talk about other people's affairs as you would 
like other people to talk about yours, would you 
adopt that style of conversation ? Do you want your 
affairs to be on everybody's lips, your comings and 
goings to be in everybody's mouth, all your affairs 
to be the common topic thrown here and there as you 
fling crumbs to the sparrows ? It is this, I beg you 
to believe that is a menace to good manners : and a 
society in which almost everybody knows everybody 
else is very likely to grow garrulous about other 
people's business. Bad manners ! There is a type 
of bad manners when you do n't remember that other 
people have feelings ; when you do n't remember that 
other people have hearts ; when you do n't remember 
other people have shadows under the porches of 
their lives ; when you do n't remember that other 
people have their sufferings though they do n't show 
it ; when you do n't remember that other people are 
trying to keep, as we say, "a stiff upper lip" in the 
midst of the world's affairs. O, men and women, 
remember, if you are mannerly, you will put the 
BEST construction on things instead of the worst; 
you will speak kindly of people rather than harshly ; 
if you are mannerly, you will bring a grace on your 
lips and hands and in vour heart to bear upon the 



God Enduring Bad Manners. 103 

dispatch of other people's affairs. Remember, 
manner is so deep, so pimgently sweet, as that God 
lays a good deal of store by it. 

Well, here was a people God found ill mannerly, 
and I reckon God finds a good deal of bad manners 
as he goes around, a good deal of ill manners. Here 
was a people God had cradled, and for forty years, 
He "suffered their manners." Do you know, I 
think "suffer" is so apt a word, so total in its ap- 
propriateness, so terrible in its aptness to this situa- 
tion, to "suffer" their manners. Do you know any- 
thing more delightful that a sweet mannerly 
child, or less delightful than an ill mannerly child? 
Do you know that a little child ought to be the joy 
of the house and of houses nigh by? If a child is 
sweet, you can hardly keep it at home because the 
neighbors want to borrow it. They take it over next 
door and say, "Did you ever see such a sweet baby ?" 
And they borrow it and take it clear across the 
street, and say, "Did you ever see such a lovely 
child? We wish it was ours," — and a mannerly 
child is a delight ; but an ill mannerly child is worse 
than chickens in your neighbor's yard. An ill man- 
nerly child will make trouble every sort of where. 
He will mutilate everything he sees ; he will "sass" 
everybody he meets, and he will use you ill ; he will 



io4 Eternity in the Heart. 

say to his mother, "Now, you shut up." And she '11 
say, "Why, Charlie, you must n't speak to Mamma 
that way," — some women talk when they ought to 
work ! If you find you have a child with no sort of 
manners, you would better quit talking to him. 
Talking does n't seem to be appropriate to the occa- 
sion. The use of the thing Solomon spoke of, I for- 
get what it was, seems more appropriate. Some 
people have children that need a basting more than 
a blessing. They need a good deal more whipping 
than kissing. I am not arguing for spanking chil- 
dren, but I say lots of them need it. It is better to 
give wholesome correction to your child and have 
the child be mannerly than it is to give no correction 
and have him a menace to the whole community. 
Is n't that right ? Mannerly children are so de- 
lightful. Children are so winsome you can hardly 
keep them out of your life. Have you seen one of 
those stony men, cold as winter and sedate as the 
tomb, and without any sort of words? and he sits 
and holds his hands, and does n't care for anything. 
But let a little child come around with his sweet, 
winsome ways ; he does n't know the man is frigid, 
he does n't know anything about conservatism ; he 
will ask a thousand little questions, and pretty soon, 
— did you ever see a man like that thaw out? The 



God Enduring Bad Manners. 105 

little fellow will lean up to him and say, "What's 
your name, Mister ?" and the man does n't say any- 
thing, and the little fellow will say, "What 's your 
name, Mister ?" and the man says, "Oh, go along to 
your mother !" And the little fellow would not know 
he said go off, but he 'd ask, "What 's your name, 
Mister ?" It 's a pretty mean man that under the 
wiles of such a sweet little fellow, would n't after 
a while, thaw out. A little child with sweet win- 
someness has a marvelous way of getting into peo- 
ple's hearts ; but an ill mannerly child, — nobody can 
regard him; his parents love him but can not ad- 
mire him. 

But O, Beloved, when manhood is ill-mannerly, 
when a race has cultivated ill manners ! Do n't you 
know you can not give manners to people? You 
can not graft manners on to people as nurserymen 
graft buds into trunks of trees. Don't you know 
manners are saplings and have to be grown from 
the seed? Don't you know that parents having 
manners, have children without manners? Some- 
times I have heard people say, just as glibly as 
anything in the world, "If the parents use good 
English, the children will." I hope it is not so, 
I know it is not so. You can not furnish grammar 
for your children, it is as much as you can do 



io6 Eternity in the Heart. 

for yourself. Children whose parents speak gram- 
matically do n't speak grammatically, necessarily, 
they are more apt to; but do not think children 
speak ungrammatically because their parents do. 
I would regret to believe that every mean trick the 
child has, he had from his parents. That 's non- 
sense. He associates with others as well as his par- 
ents; he carries on busines for himself. God can 
not make people mannerly. Do you know, I think 
this is a great and fearsome word I have spoken. 
If God had His way, — God is courteous, God is 
affable in name and nature, God is genial in temper 
as the springtime wind ; He is gracious as the com- 
ing of any grace you know, and the presence of any 
visitor you can guess ; God is mannerly, but He 
can not give people behavior; He can not furnish 
courtesy; He can not, from over His counter, give 
out any sort of glory. Just as God can not make 
flowers bloom without planting seeds, so God can 
not make courtesies and amenities bloom except 
people let Him plant the seeds and tend them and 
grow them. 

Did you ever notice the beauty of the morning 
glory? Did you ever think that if you would have 
them grow next year, you must let the seeds fall 
here, or let the wind tousle the old dead stalk and 



God Enduring Bad Manners. 107 

shake from its pockets the seed of the morning 
glory, and let them lie in the ground, and then when 
spring comes, and spring has branched toward June, 
and June has gone into July, there will be such 
bewildering blues and pinks and whites and mar- 
velous colorings as will make the sun glad he rose 
to see them. Well, after that fashion, you are to 
let the seeds of courtesy fall in the soil of your heart 
and grow from the seed upward. If God could give 
the world manners, it would be mannerly, and there 
would be a thousand times as much beauty and 
grace as there is. 

Here was a people called Israel. God had done 
all sorts of things for them, all he needed to do, 
and so much more. He had given them liberty. 
Liberty is the greatest gift the human soul pos- 
sesses except God, and God, indeed, is another name 
for liberty. He had fetched them out of bondage; 
He had broken the chariot wheels of the pursuing 
Pharaoh ; He had smitten the hosts of Pharaoh in 
the face and broken their spirits ; He had hammered 
their chariots down deep into the waves; and the 
swirling waters of the mighty sea went over them ; 
and only here and there you could see the lift of 
a drowning crest, and could hear the neigh of a 
drowning steed and the cry of a drowning captain ; 



108 Eternity in the Heart. 

and when the morning broke gray, and then to 
pearly white and then to clear white, from the East, 
only the wind dashed upon the shore and ham- 
mered the waves ; — and God had led Israel to free- 
dom. He led them to where the skies were open, 
and Sinai towered ; He led them to where they could 
see the mountains' crests; He led them out of the 
alluvial land of the Nile and out of the yellow desert 
that stretched to the horizon, to a new land where 
they could see mountains fling their spacious alti- 
tudes to the sun ; He brought them out of bondage 
into freedom; He gave them the choicest gift His 
hand has yet produced; He gave them what our 
ancestors fought from 'j6 to '83 to possess them- 
selves of; He gave them what the black race had 
to have; and it took the slaughter of hundreds and 
thousands of men to buy its purchase with blood. 
These men had liberty: and they never so much 
as turned their faces toward God and said, "I 
thank you for your love and courtesy." 

God gave them a leader. I do think, if the soul 
ought to thank God forever for anything, it is for 
leadership, — for some one to come and say, "Come 
with me, and I will show you the way to greatness." 
Moses came without any large gift of language, 
with no large self-esteem, but with beautiful hu- 



God Enduring Bad Manners. 109 

mility and a clean spirit and trust in God ; he came 
with large self-renunciation, and with the grace of 
self-sacrifice like a woman's devotion, and he led 
them out of slavery into manhood. God gave them 
a leadership; and these people who had received 
a leader, the bequest of one such being enough to 
make a whole race and the whole earth rich, when 
they had all this, they scarcely lifted the turban from 
the face and said, "I thank you for your courtesy." 
He brought them out into a land, — he gave them 
as it were, a continent, — He brought them not into 
conquest so much as into a land of plenty; He 
builded cities for them ; He stormed the battlements 
along the way they took; He opened every gate; 
He put the key in their hand; He brought them 
out to where the grapes grew in huge clusters in 
the valley of Eschol; He brought them into a land 
where the streams trickled and the rivulets sang, 
and they could hear the plash of fountains; He 
brought them to where there were mountains that 
talked about God, and to where at Jerusalem, the 
Temple stood fronting the eternal mystery of the 
dawn : and these people scarcely said, even then, 
"I thank you for your courtesy of leadership." All 
this, He did. 

More, — He made them to have a great mission, 



no Eternity in the Heart. 

O, man, what is like that, O, woman, what is like 
that? If you have no business in the world, you 
will be worthless; if you have a business, you will 
be worth-full. But though the temple of service in 
your life be stately and beautiful, if the Master has 
no door of entrance, if He has no hand in the serv- 
ice, your life will rot. And to this Israel, God gave 
a business. He said, "I will bless the world through 
you; I will bring light to the Gentiles, I will pro- 
claim my truth to the uttermost parts of the earth 
through you." And they never said, "For Thy 
largeness of mercies, and for Thy tender kindness, 
we bless Thee." No, no. But when He gave them 
everything, they gave Him, NOTHING, — but ill 
manners. You say, "It is incredible?" I know it. 
You say, "It is past rational belief?" I know it. 
You say, "It is shameless beyond all words to ex- 
press ?" I know it ; but it is the truth. 

And what I say here is that you and I are no 
better than Israel in the way we do. We do what 
they did. We are guilty of ingratitude and thought- 
lessness ; we are guilty of adoration of low things ; 
we are guilty of lack of high ideals, — all that: 
and Israel was ungrateful. What a shameful vice 
that is, — ungrateful to God! He had remembered 
them ; He had never forgotten them ; He had given 



God Enduring Bad Manners. hi 

them a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of flame 
by dark ; He had given them manna when they were 
hungry ; He had given them gushing waters from 
the solid rock when they were thirsty nigh unto 
death ; and their flocks and herds and little children 
and wives and mothers had drunk and had a plenty : 
He had given them so much, and they gave Him 
neither worship nor praise. 

He gave them a Tabernacle, a place to worship 
God and a place of inspiration to holy purposes, 
and they were ungrateful. What is the difference 
between you and me, and them ? Are n't we un- 
grateful? Do we remember God? He has given 
us all He gave Israel. He has given Sinai and 
Calvary; He has given the Tabernacle which He 
gave them ; He has given the temple which they 
did not know; He has given us the church which 
they did not guess at, and we do n't love Him and 
serve Him. What is that? It is bad manners. 

These people were ill mannerly in that they had 
no high ideals, — and I tell you, without high ideals, 
life must fail, life must die. They had no big 
ideals. O, if we could get big ideas of what we 
could do ; if we could get big ideas of what God 
means in His book ; if we could get big ideas of 
enlightening uninformed souls about God; if we 



ii2 Eternity in the Heart. 

could get big ideas of what our hands are for; big 
ideas of what our lives are meant for; if we could 
get big ideas of what our brains are meant for. 
O, if we could get the big idea that our minds were 
made to counsel with God; that our hands were 
meant to do deeds for the glory of God; that our 
feet were meant to walk in the ways of virtue and 
sobriety, upward to God. All that. 

"God suffered their manners." Oh, do you 
know, men and women, when I read that story, it 
makes my heart ache? If He only could have 
ENJOYED them,— if He only could have looked 
upon them with gladness and said, "These manners 
please me :" if He could have looked upon them as 
a man looks at a little child playing in his door 
yard, — it is the little girl's birthday, and they are 
having a party, and the feast is spread, and they are 
picnicing, and the little girl looks up and sees him 
and calls, "We 're having such a good time, Papa, 
come down here, we will let you stay." And he 
stands at the window and looks at the little lassie 
with her laughing eyes and tousled curls and calls 
his wife and says, "Did you ever see a happier, 
sweeter sight than that?" and she says, "Did you 
ever see a baby as nice as ours?" and he says "No. 
Did you ever see a face like that?" There is some- 



God Enduring Bad Manners. 113 

thing a man and his wife can agree on. So they 
are looking at the children and they say, "Is n't that 
beautiful?" and you enjoy it. Why, that is what 
life is meant for, — that is what children are for, 
that the parents may enjoy them, — and when God 
looks on our life, He honestly wants to enjoy it, 
and can not ; all He can do is to suffer it. Oh, man 
think on this. God is disappointed in your life. 
Oh, woman, God is sorry for the way you behave. 
You are gross in habits when you ought to be cul- 
tivated; you are careless when you ought to be 
careful. And it says, "God suffered their man- 
ners/' — God is suffering our manners. When we 
remember how we could make God enjoy our life 
to-night, it is our shame; and it will be our lasting 
shame in life and in death and in eternity. "God 
suffered their manners." 

Now, our manners are something after this sort 
with God. We don't love Him. That is the 
worst possible bad manners toward God. The worst 
manners children could have toward parents would 
be not to love them. Why, if your lad did n't love 
you, — if you said, "Charlie, do you love Father?" 
and he would say, "Why, no, I do n't love my 
father, why should I?" "Why," the neighbors 
would say, "did you ever hear of such a child, — he 
8 



ii4 Eternity in the Heart. 

does n't love his father, he does n't love his mother." 
And you and I are God's children, and He has done 
greatly for us, — He has loved us with an everlasting 
love ; He has given us opportunities ; He has given 
us books for reading; He has given us friends, and 
culture and travel ; He has given us grace over 
against grace; He has piled mercies high as 
Heaven, so if we clambered up their long summits, 
they would land us by the stars, — and we do n't 
love Him. That is the worst of bad manners. 

We don't obey Him. He says, "Follow my 
leadership;" and we don't do it: He says, "Read 
my Book; and we don't do it: He says, "Son, 
daughter, make your prayer and be alone with me ;" 
and we make no prayer, and there is no being alone 
with God: He says, "Turn your eyes my way, and 
I will wipe your dripping tears away, and make 
your heaven light ;" and we do n't do it : He says, 
"Have faith in God;" and we DON'T DO IT. 
We are ill mannerly to God. 

The man Moses, whose name I have spoken in 
your hearing, God ENJOYED him. He was fa- 
vored with a multitude of years. He was a man 
of eighty when he came to God's larger business. 
His eyes were keen, his form unstooped, his hair 
was gray, his expectations great, his horizons wide; 



God Enduring Bad Manners. 115 

his hands had been filled with labor, and he was 
equipped for toil; and he wanted to do God's busi- 
ness. And he sidled up to God, — how sweet a life 
that is, to be neighborly with God, — he went and 
hid in the crevice of a rock so he could be in it and 
see God when He went by and see the flow and 
glow of His wondrous garments. He talked with 
Him on the mountain, and his face shone, but he 
did n't know it, and the people thought the sun had 
risen through the mists and that they beheld the 
morning, — and this man, God LOVED. He spoke 
to him many times ; He gave him the ten command- 
ments upon the tables of stone; (once God wrote 
them, and once, Moses) ; He looked upon His serv- 
ant, and approved him; He said, "You are doing 
well; you have a hard task, but you are doing it 
nobly:" He said, "These people are rebellious, but 
you are patient; they have no discretion, but you 
supply wisdom. You are true to me as the apple 
of mine eye." O, what if all Israel had been in 
that fashion! 

And by and by, Moses, tired, — not weary alto- 
gether, but tired, for all, — he could have gone far- 
ther, and would have gone farther, for eagerness 
was in his step, and the flash of the morning was 
still in his eyes ; he was overburdened not overborne 



n6 Eternity in the Heart. 

by his immense labor, but he said, "I will work 
one day more:" and God said, "You can not go 
across. Come up where I am, and I will let you 
look across." And He took him up the mountain, 
and he looked over from Pisgah's summit, and saw 
clean across the Jordan's stream to where the land 
of promise studded the blue sky with its mountains : 
he looked at it with laughter and tears mixed in 
face and voice, and he said, "Could n't you let me 
go over ?" and God said, "No, you can not go over." 
And invited him a little higher up the mountain, 
and met him face to face, and said, "You can not 
go over to Canaan, but I will let you go over into 
a land of Canaan which is very far off, beyond the 
Jordan and through its flow, and to the land where 
glories waste not, and the darkness comes not for- 
ever." God approved the manners of Moses, and 
"suffered" the manners of Israel. 

Beloved, it is a great thing, if only we thought 
it, to have God so He approves us and looks at us 
with laughter, and so He says, "You did well, 
to-day." Beloved, it is Sunday night. To-morrow, 
you will work. I plead with you to-night, as I plead 
with my own heart, let us make it a good week. 
Let us not let God SUFFER our manners, but 
ENJOY them. Eet us not trouble God, but help 



God Enduring Bad Manners. 117 

Him. Let us not thwart Him, but bring help to 
His assistance: so when another Sunday night 
comes, God can look at us and say, "It was a good 
week, full of courtesy, full of thoughtfulness, full 
of minding the needs of others, full of caring with 
sweet considerateness for others' invalidism; full of 
prayers, full of trust, full of love, full of hope, full 
of religion, full of grace, full of glory, FULL OF 
GOD." And people who live that way, I beg you to 
believe me, if they have tears to fall, it will not be 
forever; if they have heart-aches, God will stanch 
the flow of their wounds betimes, and give them 
a little time for gracious sleep ; if they have dis- 
couragements, God will not let distresses slay them ; 
if they have business calamities, they will find out 
that there are larger seas ships may sail than the 
seas of business prosperity : and God will at length, 
in His providence and grace, bring them to their 
desired haven. Let us pray. 

PRAY BR. 

OH, Lord God ', if Thou wouldst teach us! We are 
slozv learning, like dull children in the very lowest room 
at school. We are big boys and girls and ought to be in 
the upper form, and yet, we have been so derelict in study, 
so thoughtless in our enterprise for knowledge, so slozv 
in our comprehension of little things, that we are grown 
big, and still we are in the little children's room. OK God 



n8 Eternity in the Heart. 

forgive us, we haven't paid attention, zve didn't care to 
know. 

May we tonight learn God's good lesson of holy con- 
duct and consecrated behavior: and may zve know thai 
nobody can behave so well, and have such dignified beauty 
of manner as somebody whose life is hid with Christ in 
God. People who love Christ supremely, will love each 
other supremely; so that their thinkings and doings will 
be beautiful, like salve and ointment for the diseased: 
may our manners be such. 

Encourage us in our enterpri ... in trying for good be- 
havior. Bear with our little infirmities. Grant the sweet- 
ening grace of Thy forbearance to rest upon the manners 
of this congregation bowed in Thy presence, and we will 
try to behave a little better. Fortify us with Thy love, 
stimulate us by Thy presence and smile, so that we will 
rejoice in Thee while we live, and triumph in Thee when 
we diet we ask for Christ's sake, Amen. 



V. 
RESOLUTION. 

PRA YBR. 

0, LORD GOD if Thou wast so far off we could not 
love Thee, it would be very sad for all of us: but Thou art 
near by, and we bless Thee for it. Be a little nigher to us, 
O, Lord, than we have ever let Thee be before, — because 
Thy nighness depends upon our inclinations. Come close. 
We reach forth with hands and catch Thee by the gar- 
ments. Stay close to us. In life or deaths in famine or 
plenty, in comeliness or loss of beauty, stay with us. 
"Hold Thou Thy Cross before our dying eyes," 
"Shine through the gloom and point us to the skies:" 
"Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee," 
"In life, in death, 0, Lord, abide with me." 

AMEN. 



"I am resolved what to do." — Luke xvi, 4. 

As you may suppose, since you are smart peo- 
ple, I am going - to preach on "New Years' Resolu- 
tions," and I do n't want you to laugh at me. 

We make jests of many things which are pro- 
foundly serious; and I suppose the majority of us 
have gotten into a chronic state of making jests con- 
119 



120 Eternity in the Heart. 

cerning New Year's resolves ; whereas, the plain 
truth of the business is that if we are ever going 
to mend our ways, we must come to the reso- 
lution point sometime, somewhere. I have n't the 
remotest doubt that a great many more New Year's 
resolutions are kept than any other resolutions of 
any other time of the year. People make resolutions 
on New Year's by the wholesale, and talk about 
them; others are apprised of the things they said 
they were going to do and did not do, and said they 
lied about them ; whereas, the rest of the year, they 
made resolutions, but did not talk about them, and 
others did not know they lied about them: it was 
not that they lie particularly more at New Year's 
time, or broke New Year's resolutions more par- 
ticularly, but that people knew about it. 

I confess for my part, to be profoundly moved 
by a great resolve. There is in my study, the bronze 
face of a man who has come to the point of destiny 
making resolution : his helmet is drawn down below 
his ears, it fits close, and sets in upon his fore-head ; 
his brow is knit, his eyes look afar and see nothing ; 
his lips are knitted together like the clasps upon 
the manacle of a prisoner; his chin seems as if it 
meant that this man would drive through tempests 
of seas and over ragged edges of mountains, and 



Resolution. 121 

through storms of winter, and the wild hot breath 
of summer, to compass the thing of his desire. 
Underneath is written this legend : "The die is cast." 
I make no doubt the face is Csesar's face. I assume 
that the legend comes from the time when Caesar, 
depending upon his own strength to compass his 
desires, crossed the Rubicon and said, "The die is 
cast.". I look on that face day after day; it has 
a strange fascination for me; I feel as I look at it, 
as I do when I look at the clouds floating across 
the blue skies in the blue times of summer, or at the 
stars in the vasty night sky, as if I were looking at 
something I could not compass, some nameless thing 
I could not comprehend, — it is that this man has 
come to the point of resolution ; whether for good or 
for ill, for the making or unmaking of a world, is 
neither here nor there, — resolution is a sublime spec- 
tacle : when life rises up to meet the tempest ; when 
all one's strength springs up to break down spite 
and irony, it is a spectacle equipped to catch the 
eyes of the angels of God. There is n't anybody 
who dares to be inattentive when Martin Luther, be- 
set by a dignified synod, environed by hedges of an- 
gry political opponents, — there is n't anybody who 
can be lacking in sensitiveness to Martin Luther's 
high resolve, when he looks all this in the face, and 



122 Eternity in the Heart. 

sees the hierarchy against him, and knows how his 
life is in jeopardy, and faces dangers that shut down 
on him like the night. There is something past belief 
in the splendor of the man, and he looks beyond and 
sees the smiling face of the great God, and says, 
"Here I stand : God help me. I can do no other." 
I read that passage sometimes to get my flaccid 
energies revived once more, — to get the debased 
currency of my life once more cast into the furnace 
and get the alloy all burnt out. 

I have often read that passage, and re-read it, 
and read once again, that passage in the life of 
William the Silent, — when for years he had been 
hiding a secret in his heart, when he had known 
for a multitude of years what Phillip II intended 
against his country and the Protestant regions round 
about, when this man, breaking the chains which 
bound him, and running out of the palace gates, and 
putting himself into antagonism to the chiefest king 
of the world, the king who had the greatest fleets 
tossed upon the seas laden with gold and silver, that 
had the bank counters of the earth over which to 
trade, and the exchequers richer than the Caesars 
ever knew, — when a prince in a petty province, de- 
cided that before God he would try to free his 
country from the incubus of tyranny, the man be- 



Resolution. 123 

.came sublime. I do say here tonight, and I 
know you will not say me nay, anybody who comes 
honorably to the point of resolution, that man is 
to be respected. 

Sometimes we grow bad without purpose, but 
so far as I have ever seen, people never grow good 
without purpose. I am not here to argue or explain 
how it is, but am very sure I am speaking solemn 
truth attested to by all the records of the world 
when I say, no life happens into goodness. We 
do n't stumble into virtue, we do n't rise upon the 
stones of anything other than sublime purpose when 
we grow to be good, when we mount up to be the 
sons of God. We don't chance on sublime mo- 
ments, we do n't get to be martyrs by imbecility, 
or opportunity, but we get to be good some 
way or other through some circumstance or other 
and we see and seize our opportunity, and resolve 
with the help of God to use it. I would never smile 
at such endeavors. It were better to attempt the 
higher life a thousand times and miss it, than never 
to have tried at all. It is always a virtue on the 
part of the young bird that it tries to fly. I have seen 
the birdling flutter and fail and fall on the ground, 
while the mother bird chirped around it, and then 
resolve to try again; and that was blessed. The 



124 Eternity in the: Heart. 

resolution to try once more, — O, men and women, 
tonight would you hear me when I say that God is 
calling to you, though He uses only this broken 
voice of mine? God is calling you and saying, 
'Tick up the broken thread of your life. Try once 
more the story of goodness you tried once to tell. 
Take up the poor words 'pied' into tumultuous dis- 
arrangement, take them up and spell them out once 
more." Do you think because the printer had pied 
all his words together in such wild disorder that 
he should essay the printer's art no more? Do you 
think when he looks at his work and thinks, "This 
is only gibberish, there is nothing here," that he 
should say, "I will have done with the art, I have 
tried to learn and could not?" Let him try once 
more! Men and women, try God's business once 
again tonight. We say, "The third time 's the 
charm," but that is neither here nor there, — the 
last time may be the charm. If you have been a 
drunkard, try once more to reform; if you have 
been foul in speech, try once more to be clean, — 
if you have been a drunkard in your words and not 
in your life, in God's name, try and refrain from 
unclean talk and try to be a man in speech again. 
If you have been unjust in your accounts, if you 
have tampered with the legitimacy of trade, if you 



Resolution. 125 

have been peculative, in God's name try once more 
to do right. God helping you, you wont fail. If 
you will take the Almighty God into partnership 
with you, you do n't know what things will come to 
pass. I will tell you, if I stood again at the be- 
ginnings of my trade, if I were beginning my book 
reading again, if I had my feet on the threshold 
of life as I had in a day long ago, if I had my 
first Greek primer open before my face, if I were 
beginning my career once more, I will tell you hon- 
orably, I would not pray less, but more; I would 
not attend church less, but more ; I would not be so 
eager to save time as that I should lose my soul; 
I would not be so eager to save time, that I would 
rob God. 

RESOLVE. — Here was a bad man, and he said, 
"I am resolved what to do." I declare, even a bad 
man's resolution has something fascinating about it, 
like the sight of a serpent charming a bird. When 
Napoleon desecrated rights, ruined governments, 
killed legions, and waded through blood to thrones, 
you can not deny there was something splendid 
in the audacity of his resolution. 

You can not deny that in the audacity of Wil- 
liam the Conqueror, with no legitimacy of claim to 
the English throne, with his French speech and 



126 Eternity in the: Heart. 

manners, with his Norman ideas of things, with 
his iron hand, with his furious courage, who said he 
would kill Harold the accepted and legitimate king, 
and he would be the ruler of the kingdom, you can 
not deny, bloodthirsty and outrageous as was his 
enterprise, you can not deny there was in it some- 
thing splendid. He resolved to do, and did. What- 
ever you may think of William the Conqueror, you 
must know he made a different language from what 
England would have spoken without him; he 
changed the legal codes of the English-speaking 
world ; he changed our poetry, our oratory, our type 
of thinking, our rules of trade, — all that : one resolu- 
tion did it. 

In God's name, let us here tonight, make some 
resolution which God shall speak of in Heaven with 
pride and say, "This man," or "this woman, re- 
solved to the better, and started out for the king- 
dom of God." 

I never think of Milton with his sight, — and 
I have seen him in imagination many times, so many 
times, I would not care to estimate, when his eyes 
were good, when his heart beat for liberty, when 
he loved justice and hated enthroned wrong whether 
it were called "king" or "parliament" or what, — 
I can not think of him without spendthrift interest, 



Resolution. 127 

when I remember he took his pen in hand to write 
the Areopagitica, wherein he said, "The English 
people have a right to print the thoughts they 
think :" and he made the most stalwart and amazing 
plea for the individual expression of individual opin- 
ion that ever has been made. And when he was 
blind, when the flash of the lightning had flamed 
across his eye-balls, in his darkness, I see him yet, — 
how he takes another's hand and guides it, and it 
is a woman's hand betimes, and he says, "Write this, 
and this," and his darkness pressed down upon him, 
but he was resolved while life should last, though 
sight were dead, he would still serve his country 
and his God; and he wrote "Paradise Lost," and 
some of those amazing words that shock us now 
as if the lightnings flashed into the very core of our 
life, — O, the man's resolution was sublime! 

What hinders you to resolve for great deeds, for 
purity, for better manhood? What hinders you to 
resolve for the purest conceivable life that ever 
bloomed in the heart? God and myself, God and 
yourself, that is spendthrift might, and there isn't 
anybody that can successfully battle against it. 

I think we ought to resolve that we will take 
advantage of the century and live up to it. It is 
a good deal to have an ideal fixed for us. Last 



128 Eternity in the Heart. 

spring, I did as I usually do, I bought a lot of 
flowers. If I ever grew one all summer, I have 
forgotten it. I never got one to grow. They are 
choice. I always buy a lot of flowers, but I never 
grow them. Are my intentions good? Tip-top. 
Do I put flowers right end up and right end down? 
Yes. Do I water them? Yes. What ails the 
flowers that they do n't grow ? Well, I think among 
other things, one is that the soil is not the right soil. 
Then I think one thing is, the florist who raised 
them, petted them too much, and forced them into 
bloom so that poor, unsuspicious ministers would 
buy them because they looked so perky and so 
pretty, and I think they are petered out before I 
get them. When I get them and put them out in 
the frosty weather, they do n't like it. I never 
bought a fuchsia yet, and put it out to grow, that 
the thing did n't quit. It would not resume specie 
payment or any other sort of payment; and pretty 
soon, those flowers which bloom so beautifully, that 
I like to sit down and look at them just as I like 
to look at beautiful girls, pretty soon, they fade 
away. I suppose there is something in the soil, 
and in the hand that trains, and in the gumption 
that has methods for developing flowers, but what- 
ever it is about the flowers, I do say it is a blessed 



Resolution. 129 

thing to belong to an era of the world when the 
highest ideals have made themselves at home, and 
rooted themselves in our soil. I am told that you 
can not transplant beech trees and make them live. 
They are beautiful where God has put them, but 
they do not seem to take to being transplanted. 
It is a great thing to have light and air and sun- 
shine and wandering winds, and night-t;me dews, 
and day-time rains, and radiant suns for the growth 
of things. I say it is a fortunate thing that we live 
when we do, when the highest ideals of history 
have made themselves at home in our lives. 

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, the 
sum total of college and court would have been 
against you if you had wanted to be a Christian. 
Tom Paine's words were on the lips of every col- 
legian. You would have found in multitudes of 
places, in courts, in palaces, in the marts of trade, 
on ship-board, on the wharf, in the hovel, here and 
there upon the dusty road-way, on the ways that led 
to the hills, you would have found that the words of 
Voltaire, of Bolingbroke, and of Shaftesbury pre- 
vailed. People were talking infidelity. I thank 
God tonight in the name of young manhood, that 
Tom Paine's day is long past. If anybody 
here thinks that ribald infidelity is here, he does 
9 



130 Eternity in the: Heart. 

not know. The day of flagrant infidelity is past. 
When a man now wants to say he is an infidel, he 
never thinks to say he is an infidel, he does not tell 
us he is a deist, he says, "I am an agnostic." In 
the old days, they did not speak that speech: they 
simply said, "I do not believe in a God," and the 
words were withered — as the leaves are — in Novem- 
ber when the cold has come. 

If a man wants to be a Christian now, somehow, 
the soil and the air are helpful to him. The world 
has answered the diatribes of infidelity. The day 
when Christianity was on trial, is long- since for- 
gotten. Anybody who supposes Christianity can 
not bear the test of the revelations of time, anybody 
who supposes Christianity can not bear the prick 
of the naked sword blade, does not know. We live 
in a time when high ideals are native to our soil. 

Peculations in public positions were the common 
belonging of the world a century ago. Three 
months ago, all parts of the country were simply in 
a perfect conflagration about some stealings done 
in Cuba. Do n't you know, a century ago, that sort 
of thing would not have been mentioned. Henry 
Fox, who became Lord Holland, stole himself so rich, 
that at one time, he paid three-quarters of a million 
dollars of gambling debts for his son and did not 



Rksoujtion. 131 

feel it. In those good old days, people stole both 
hands full at once, and no one thought anything of 
it. Now you can not steal without people's saying, 
"Do n't you know better ? Did n't your mother tell 
you any better ? Have n't you any pride, any de- 
cency ? Do n't you care for the good name you have 
borne?" It is n't a good age to be a thief in. I 
am honest. If I had no morality, I think I would 
want to live in peace, and in the respect of my 
neighbors. It is a great thing when civilization has 
turned its back upon vicious finesse. In the old 
days, those things were the high-way to success. 
Today it is easier to live up to high ideals than it 
ever was. It is popular to be good. In the old 
days it was popular to be good for nothing, and 
there were plenty of people popular. 

I have seen some men in our time who lived 
off their debts. I tell you honestly, that method 
of making a living was prevalent in the old time. 
The bankrupt that made a prince of himself would 
have had hosts of company in the old times. We 
know Oliver Goldsmith had to write his own 
beautiful romance that drips with its tears yet, like 
a woman weeping, "The Vicar of Wakefield," to 
save himself from a debtor's prison. Sheridan 
would not let anybody come in at his door, because 



132 Eternity in the Heart. 

he knew they would come with a pack of duns. — 
That was customary. A man estimated his gentility 
by the number of debts he owed, and the number of 
debts he did not propose to pay. The sooner young 
men know this that if they get only fifty cents a 
day, they want to live inside of it, and if they get 
only three dollars a week, they ought to live inside 
of three dollars a week, the sooner they know this, 
the better it is for themselves and for society. It 
is better to understand that we ought to be honest 
and pay every bill than it is to save a copper. I 
thank God we have grown into what I have termed 
"the era of honesty," when it is respectable to be 
honest. It is an easier thing to live up to a high 
ideal tonight than ever before. If you are not 
honest, it is not because the times are not to your 
help. If you are not virtuous it is not because the 
times are not in your favor. I would to God tonight 
that every man and woman would come out under 
the full light of the open day, and see the ideals God 
hath transplanted to our century, and the air He has 
brought with them, and then try to live up to them. 
The curious thing about the world is that it takes 
its own atmosphere with it. It does not trust to 
the lonely spaces through which it runs to gather 
breath, but takes its atmosphere with it. So God 



Resolution. 133 

has brought not only high ideals into our century 
but He has brought an atmosphere fitted to grow 
and nurture such ideals. I think therefore, we ought, 
in this coming year to try to be totally clean. There 
is nothing, I suppose, more beautiful in purity than 
newly fallen snow; there is nothing less beautiful 
than snow with soot upon it : there is nothing more 
ingratiating to God than a clean nature; there is 
nothing more hateful to God than a foul soul. Bless 
God, we can all keep our lives clean. 

I am not asking about your past, let God remem- 
ber that if He must, or forget it if He will ; let us 
try a new chance; let us begin a new race; let us 
turn our faces and our feet God's way, and make 
for a new life. I confess to you that this thing 
always inspires me, — I am glad before God that we 
live in a time when a clean man has become heroic. 
I am glad that the essays written by Hume, in their 
ethics are as effete as the Deluge. I am glad that 
cleanness is heroic; that King Arthur is a hero of 
the new world; that Valjean with his cleanness of 
regenerative life is a hero ; that a man like Colonel 
Newcombe reduces us to tears ; I am glad that clean 
manhood and womanhood bankrupt our lips of epi- 
thets because their grace is so unspeakable, we have 
no adjectives or epithets whereby we dare essay to 



134 Eternity in the Heart 

describe them. I would like to be a decent com- 
panion for the angels of God, and for men and 
women. If you are not good company for clean 
folks, you are not fit to live; if you can not go 
where decency is and feel at home, you are not fit 
to live. I am not asking you whether you have a 
bank account, whether your clothes are patched, 
whether you live in a garret or in a palatial home; 
I am asking you this larger question : what is the 
state of your life? Have you a clean life? Would 
you be ashamed to have Jesus walk into your room ? 
If you are going to lead a clean life, you will 
have to associate with clean people; you will have 
to live in clean moral localities. I do not say you 
will have to move, — clean moral localities are not 
geographically distributed. You can not go to New 
York City and pick out the moral slums. Moral 
slums are wherever degraded men and women live; 
it is not on one street or another; it is not in the 
tenements; it is not where the Italians or the Irish 
clutter; the slums of New York City are wherever 
people bring the dregs of a vicious life and pour 
them on the ground and make it sterile. I don't 
care where rich people or poor people live, I don't 
care where beggars or princes live: I am saying 
that a good moral neighborhood is where people 



Resolution. 135 

are trying to iive so that God won't be ashamed of 
them. Beloved, it is at your house, it is at my 
house. There is no place deleterious to morals if 
you want to get in the neighborhood of God. If 
you get Christ around, you are like people that 
dwell in summer days on mountain ranges, — it is 
always blessed there. The cool breath of the wind, 
the shadows fertile with rest, the pine trees making 
odorous all the air, the lift of the mountains afar, 
the night balm, the far vistas of the sky, make life 
one glad delight. Well, if you are where Christ 
is, you are on the mountains. He went on the 
mountain to pray, and to preach, but sometimes 
he went down into the hollows of the hills. I beg 
you to believe it is not where you live that matters, 
it does not matter what your vocation be if it be 
honest. Wherever you live, it is a good moral neigh- 
borhood if vou want to make it so. 

If you have companions not acceptable to the 
finest sense of your finest nature, do away with 
them. If you have companions your mother would 
be ashamed of, keep them no more. If your father 
should come to see you, — he probably has more 
sense in a minute than you have in a week, those 
old chaps are mighty peart, — if he should come and 
find vou with some of your flippant companions and 



136 Eternity in the Heart. 

debauched acquaintances, he would look at you and 
say, "Charlie, is that man clean?" and you would 
say, "Well Father, he is a rich man's son," and 
he would say, "Charlie, is that man clean?" and 
you would say, "He is well connected, Father;" 
"Charlie, is that man clean?" That dear old man 
has a lot of acumen. If you had some of it, 
would n't it be nice ? Do n't forget that morality is 
better than riches, better than family connections. 
I do not give a copper from whom a man is de- 
scended, if he has a clean, wholesome life. You 
can not be held responsible for your ancestry, but 
what you ought to find out is, do you live in a clean, 
moral neighborhood ? Let us hug up close to Christ 
and get where the air is a delight and where our 
strength will be renewed like the eagle's. In God's 
name, get in a good moral neighborhood! 

I suggest this : let us be religious. Morality 
which does not fructify into religion is not worth 
much. It can not keep house alone. Some people's 
morality is of the strangest sort. Sometimes men 
have said to me, "I do n't go to church Sundays, 
I play cards." 

Playing cards is dangerous business to one's 
own soul. Those people desecrated God's Day, they 
never went near God's house, they never looked 



Resolution. 137 

God's way, they never did Him the decency to be 
courteous to Him. When I see young men on the 
street, and I go past them ana! lift my hand to my 
hat, and those fellows just go right on and never 
acknowledge the attention, I think if I were those 
fellows, I would n't let a poor, ancient, weather- 
beaten Kansas minister have more courtesy than I, 
would you? 

COURTESY. — I am not arguing against mor- 
ality, I am talking about people having morality that 
have n't good manners to God. I would not like to 
be totally indecent to God. If Christ went along 
our road, do you think you would walk stalwart and 
unbending and covered before Him ? God is walk- 
ing around here betimes; God is in his holy Tem- 
ple; God is calling for service; He demands the 
fealty of the world ; He says people need to pray to 
Him; He is glad when they do; He hears little 
children's prayers and catches them, and holds them 
in memory. And people claim to be moral, and do 
not pray ! I affirm that morality that does not grow 
up into religion, is spurious : it is a poor type of 
morality. Supposing a man would go around, and 
I would say, "I thought you told me you were a 
cultivated gentleman?" "Yes, that is what I did 
tell you." "Well, what is the reason when I see 



138 Eternity in the Heart. 

you going around town, and see so many people 
bowing to you, and you bow to hardly anybody?" 
"O," he says, "I just bow to people in my 'klawss.' 
Of course a man in my position, a great many peo- 
ple know, but I just speak to people in my 'klawss.' " 
George Washington was right when he took off his 
hat to the old colored aunty. 

If God has been mannerly enough to notice you, 
don't you think it is common respectability to be 
mannerly enough to notice God? When God loved 
you, do n't you think it is decency to give a little at- 
tention to God if you do n't love Him ? 

It may be the last year of your life. Time is 
hurried, — I take my hour glass and put it down 
before me many an hour just to see that time is in 
a hurry and won't stop. The yellow sand from off 
some tawny desert, runs down, — nothing can stop 
it, runs down, a few grains at a time, persistent 
as the unsealed glacier in its onward movement, 
and as certain as the rush of the great sea, — going, 
going, till at last, every grain has seeped out, and 
the bulb above is empty and the bulb below is full. 
We have n't much time. How old are you ? Was n't 
it only the other day you were married, and cast 
your first vote. For whom .did you cast your first 
vote? "Why," you say, "let me see, why I remem- 



Resolution. 139 

ber now, I cast my first vote for Lincoln." Did 
you? Well Lincoln has been dead a long time. 
Oh, you old chap ! Getting old ? Yes. Do n't feel 
it? No. You say, "I feel as vigorous as ever I 
did." Hear me ! You ARE N'T. Time is going 
to stop pretty soon for you. How long are you 
going to live ? What 's a hundred years ? You can 
not stay here long, you have got to go quickly; 
pretty soon, you will be gone, and your hands will 
have rest for a million years. Get tired while you 
are here. Work hard. Don't whine because you 
have to work, Thank God you have the chance 
to do it. Be so honorable in the world's industry, 
and so eager to serve, that you will covet the hours 
you sleep. Work, work ! Hurry up ! Do n't wait. 
Do n't waste time. Do n't do things you will have 
to undo. Keep at your work and do it right. Keep 
at it six days in the week. Pretty soon it will be 
time to stop ; and God will come by and say, "Quit 
work," and you will say, "It is not night," and He 
says, "Quit work," and you say, "It is only two 
o'clock; I have only just begun for the afternoon." 
And He says, "Quit work:" and you say, "Master, 
it is not sun-down yet, may I not work till night?" 
and He says, "Quit work :" and you lay down your 
hammer on the anvil, with your hand black with 



140 Eternity in the: Heart. 

the grime of the smithy, and you will go out with 
him, and he will say to you, "It is time to quit 
work;" and you will say, "Will I be back in the 
morning ?" and he will say, "No, not in the morn- 
ing ;" and you will say, "Will I be back tomorrow ?" 
"No, not tomorrow;" and you will say, "Will I be 
back day after tomorrow?" and He will say, "No, 
not day after tomorrow;" and you will say, "Will 
I be back this week ?" and He will say, "No, not this 
week ;" and you will say, "Will I be back week after 
next?" "No, not week after next:" and He leads 
you past your own door; and you will say, "Here 
is where I live;" and He says, "Let us go a little 
farther;" and you will say, "Will I be back soon? 
There is a little baby in the cradle, and my wife sits 
beside the cradle," — and He says, "You can not 
come back tonight :" and you will say, "Where are 
you taking me ?" And He will say, "I am taking 
you to a land very far off, and from whose 'bourne 
no traveler returns.' " And you say, "Can not I 
go back and only kiss my baby's lips, and kiss my 
wife's cheek and tell her how I love her and how 
sorry I am I was unkind to her," — and He says, 
"Come along. This is the way." And you say, 
"Can't I go back once?" "NO." And somehow 
there is a little sternness in his voice, but you say, 



Resolution. 141 

"I MUST go back a minute, only a minute, just 
once, to tell,"— and He says, "COME ON,"— O, 
who is it? It is the Master, Death. You can 
not go back, — not for a minute, no. You might 
just as well ask for a century as for a minute ; and 
you will go past your own door, and out through 
the street, and beyond the city gate, and out into 
lanes' you never trod before, and suddenly, it will 
be pitch dark, and Death will be gone, and you will 
be in the silence where you can hear the blood beat 
around your temples like the flow of a rushing 
river, ALL ALONE. Pray God when you get 
there that Christ be with you lest you die of soli- 
tude. Amen. 



VI. 

AGAINST THEE ONLY HAVE I SINNED. 

"Against Thee, and Thee only, have I sinned." — 
Ps. H, 4. 

Here was a man who was looking himself 
straight in the face. He was looking his sins straight 
in the eyes. His name happened to be King David, 
though it might have been any of a hundred or 
thousand other names as well. Nobody monopo- 
lizes sin, or fear or loss or sorrow or joy. The diffi- 
culties of life, the passions of life, the glories of life, 
the fames of life, the disasters of life, they are dis- 
tributed through the centuries. No man monopo- 
lizes them; no woman monopolizes them; no 
generation monopolizes them; no century monop- 
olizes them; no race monopolizes them; they 
belong to the green pasture fields of the whole earth 
of history and of life. Sin is not any new thing. 
Sin is not any unusual thing.. Sins that are multi- 
tudinous, sins that are appalling, sins that are out- 
142 



Against Thke; Oni^y Have: I Sinned. 143 

rageous, sins that shake Heaven and shame God, 
they are quite current ; they are very common-place, 
— more 's the pity. So that this was no unusual 
thing- that a man had become an outrageous sinner. 
But I do say it might be a trifle unusual that a man 
had had the manliness to look his sin in the face 
and not wince. That was the only unusual thing, 
the only great exceptional on the occasion. 

Some people look nobody in the eyes. They 
look at you and over you and around you, and 
probably they will try to look through you. They 
will look down as if they were in a day dream or in 
a stupor, but they will not look at you. We say 
they have a "hang-dog" look: though I think it is 
not fair to slander the beasts. I think it is neither 
a commendable nor justifiable feature we always 
revert to, that in our allusions and similitudes, we 
are apt to explain man life by beast life, because I 
think some beasts are eminently reputable and re- 
spectable compared with some men. But you know 
what is meant. It is meant that some folks won't 
look at you frankly. They have n't the appearance 
of candor. Whatever their intentions, their attitude 
appears not to be candid. You go to the tawny lion 
lying in his cage, and he lies there as if he were 
the dug up fragment of the desert out which he 



144 Eternity in the Heart. 

came, and his sleepy eyes turn your way with a 
sort of a "I do n't care who you are," and a "I 
do n't care where you go" look ; but if you will 
look that beast steadily in his eyes, sleepy as they 
are, you will observe that his Leonine Highness 
will gracefully, (for a lion always does things grace- 
fully, like some women), turn his head away as if 
he has no interest in you. That is all. He won't 
bear your glance. There seems to be in man's 
straightforward look, some sort of might that is 
like the shine of a great light in the eyes when you 
are n't used to it, that blinds the beast. He can not 
bear it. 

There is the Royal Bengal Tiger: to my mind, 
one of the most beautiful things that ever ravished 
the eyes. That thing whose spring means death; 
that thing, with bewildering sunlight as of the 
tropics caught on his striped back and held there 
a fadeless glory; that beast won't look you straight 
in the eyes. You go to him and ask him if he is 
honest, and he will look at you blandly for a minute, 
and then turn the other way. He is a man eater. 
He has no chance at you, therefore he has no interest 
in you. Some people, if they can not use you, they 
will not care for you. Some' beasts are the like. 

What I say is this : however you may explain it, 



Against Thee; Only Have: I Sinned. 145 

and whatever your words or thoughts may be about 
it, one thing is very sure, that the inability to look 
other folks in the eyes, is a poor business qualifi- 
cation. Some people's candor of look is better 
than a corner lot in the midst of a city, to build 
upon. It is better than such a site selected by the 
Government to build upon. When the Govern- 
ment selects the site, prices go up twice in a night. 
Candor of look is a property like that. It is a prop- 
erty having immense value. Some people, when 
they look at you, you feel they are trying to trick 
you. They look at you furtively; like a woman 
looks at a man she is in love with. She looks 
aside, she looks one side, and two sides, three 
sides, four. Some people are precisely after this 
fashion. They always look at you as much as to 
say, "I will trick you. I have got it in for you. 
And you will come out worsted." 

Some people, when they have looked at me, I 
have gotten hold of my pocket book. I do n't why 
I have the feeling to do that, I know it is foolish 
to grasp at emptiness. But really, if I had any 
place where I had valuables, I think I would always 
be looking after them. Have n't you seen people 
of that sort? They are honest, may be, but they 
look at you wistfully, as much as to say, "I would 
jo 



146 Eternity in the Heart. 

like what you have, and I believe I know the trick 
to get it." This is unfortunate. 

But not everybody who wont look at you is 
dishonest; not everybody who wont look at you is 
tricky; not everybody who wont look at you has 
some esoteric qualities he is not willing you should 
perceive. Some people do n't look at you because 
their eyes are weak. They are like people whose 
eye-lids are cut away, and they wince beneath the 
glare of the sun. They are simply weak in their 
optic nerves, and have grown so that they look on 
the earth instead of at you; and we misconceive 
them. Some people do not look at you because they 
are natively modest. Some of the biggest fellows 
that ever wabbled along the street or strutted 
through the world are the most modest. Preachers 
are modest men. You would not think that of 
them, would you? You could not very well per- 
suade people that preachers are modest, but they 
are probably the most modest men in creation. 
You could not easily persuade people that men who 
have large dealings with public affairs are modest; 
but it is presumptive they have the shivers every 
time they come to touch the great palpitating thing 
we call "public life" and "public weal" and "public 
work" with a sense of fun. Some people's eyes 



Against Thee Only Have I Sinned. 147 

do n't look folks in the eyes because they have mod- 
esty in them. They are in a sort of dreamy ex- 
pectancy: but after all alleviations and all possible 
palliations are made, you know as well as I do, that 
the inability to look men and women frankly, freely, 
and absolutely straight in the eyes, is a poor busi- 
ness investment ; and the ability to look folks in the 
face, makes men practically equipped to get the most 
from the world with the least possible effort. 

Some people have to talk at you. You take the 
life insurance agent. He comes in with his brisk 
step, sits down, and says, "I suppose you have all 
the life insurance you care to take?" and you say, 
"Yes, every lonesome bit I can carry :" and he says, 
"I suppose you could n't possibly take any more ?" 
and you say, "O, yes, I could take lots more, but 
I couldn't pay for it. Do you want the job? Do 
you care to take the risk ?" But that does not abash 
him. He stays and talks and talks a long time, and 
by and by you say that you are fully insured, and 
he says he is sorry you are so fully insured, and 
you say you are sorry too. And then you say good- 
bye, and he says good-bye, for they are delightful 
gentlemen, these men that want you to enhance the 
value of your life by paying a premium on it, and 
then this pleasant, delightful, charming man is gone, 



148 Eternity in the; Heart. 

but he has n't insured you ! Another fellow comes 
in and puts his papers down on your desk, and 
says, "I came to insure you:" and it is the easiest 
thing in the world for him to get your job. You 
look at him and think he is lying, (upon my word, 
I have been at the point where I thought a life-in- 
surance man was lying, though I don't know what 
ailed me to think it. But in a moment of spasmodic 
insanity, I have honestly thought that may be he 
was lying. And I would look at him as if he would, 
and he would look at me so frankly, I would feel 
like throwing myself in his arms and saying, "For- 
give me for the perfidy of my thought. I know you 
love me better than my wife or children thought of 
doing), and he insures you! His talk didn't do it. 
What did? O, the excess of candor, the absolute- 
ness and evidentness of truthfulness fooling around 
in his eyes. He looked as if he had the eyes of a 
conquerer. He came, he saw, he INSURED : that 's 
the popular rendering of "Veni, vidi," and the rest. 
Well, now, there is the plain fact in the matter. 
You know these things to be true as well as I do. 
It is a great thing in a business way to have the 
candid look ; to be able to look folks straight in the 
eyes without winking. Sometimes when you get 
your picture taken, the artist says you are not to 



Against Thee Only Have I Sinned. 149 

wink, and then, — you do wink. Whenever he tells 
you not to wink, you mant to : and he says, "Do n't 
wink," and you do it as fast as you can. It is a 
pretty hard thing to look lots of people in the eyes 
and not blink, but if you are going to do business 
with little talk and lots of results, you must do it. 

Some people wont look themselves in the face. 
They will look others in the face, but not them- 
selves. And indeed, between the two difficulties, 
and both are agreed to be honest and sincere diffi- 
culties, but as between them, the looking yourself 
straight in the face, unwinceingly, is a great deal 
the larger difficulty. Did you ever try looking your 
face firmly r'n the countenance? Did you ever take 
up a looking glass and say, "That is just how I 
look." I think it is best when you have your picture 
taken, to look at the negative. The negative is how 
you look : not how you should look. The picture is 
how you ought to look. It is a pretty good thing 
to take the negative and look at it. Have you the 
courage to do it? If you used to be beautiful, and 
some catastrophe to looks came over your face, can 
you look yourself in the face? Homeliness is not 
pleasant. (I address myself to the men.) Homeli- 
ness is not delightful even in manhood; but if you 
are homely, you would better look yourself straight 



150 Eternity in the Heart. 

in the eyes and say, "I am homely." It is a hard 
thing to do. You can not deceive yourself when 
you thus look straight in an open glass. We ought 
to know, if we are homely, that may be God made 
us so, that we might be smart. It's hard to hang 
the two things together, — good looks and smartness ; 
us ill-looking so we might have the other advantage, 
so, it may be possible that God made so many of 
Can you look yourself honestly in the eyes? Did 
you ever try it? Did you ever do it, and never 
wince, and say, "This is how I am. This is how I 
appear. This is my precise, accurate, and exact 
self?" Can you do that? 

Did you ever look your intellectual self in the 
eyes? Did you ever take an accurate inventory of 
what you knew? Did you ever try to look over 
the whole world of knowledge, and then, at your 
little bailiwick of information? Did you ever look 
over the whole world of literature, and then remem- 
ber what you had read? Did you ever go into a 
library of sixty thousand, a hundred thousand vol- 
umes, and know you had probably read fifteen hun- 
dred in your life? Did you ever have the full cour- 
age to straightly look your intellectual life in the 
eyes and say, "I do n't know this, that or the other, 
or still the other ?" Did you ever do that ? 



Against Thee Only Have I Sinned. 151 

When you are in college, you get a good many 
close looks at your own face. They have tests. 
What 's that ? It is putting you on the rack and see- 
ing how you feel when you come down. When 
young people know too much, and do n't study 
enough, they give tests ; and under the wince and 
pull and twinge of them, they understand they do n't 
know very much. I am a firm believer in tests. I 
think there are a great many advantages in giving 
school teachers an examination every two years. 
It is quite possible to petrify at one's trade. I have 
known preachers, in their course of study, to grow 
an inch a day; and when they were through their 
studies, because there were no more examinations, 
they didn't grow an inch a year. There are some 
things to be said, in other words, for the continuity 
of tests, or for the application of some sort of reg- 
imen so that you shall be able to see yourself as you 
are, and know whether or not you are growing or 
dwarfing. Did you ever owe it to your own life to 
do that sort of thing? Did you? 

It is a good thing to look your moral self in the 
eyes. If you have an inclination to be a little grandi- 
ose morally ; if you think you are doing as much as 
anybody you know; if you think your good works 
are accumulating on you ; if you think your works of 



152 Eternity in the Heart. 

supererogation, not a ghostly imagination, but a 
fact ; if you think you are piling up a sort of moun- 
tain range of holy activity ; it is a good thing to look 
yourself straight in the eye. You have thought of a 
great many things to do, but you have fine of for- 
getfulness of things you ought to do. You are af- 
fable at this turn, but irritable at that. You wont 
be pleased with your picture if you look your moral 
life in the face. No-body ever looked his moral life 
in the face that he did not wince and was ashamed. 
There are worse things than being ashamed of your 
moral life, and one is, not to be ashamed at all. 

Did you ever look your religious life in the eyes ? 
Do you know what it is to have Christ at both ex- 
tremities of your life? Do you know what it is to 
have him at the home circle, and at the store? Did 
you ever try looking your life fairly in the eyes with 
reference not to the thing you are, but what you 
ought to be ? Did you ever view your religious life 
under the white light of Christ? Did you perceive 
how lacking you were in conscience? How God's 
accuracies had never been observed in your speech 
or life, or work? Did you observe how }^our busi- 
ness life, your social life, your home life, all of them, 
lack in accuracies like mis-spelled words a child 
brings home from school ; or like ill done sums 



Against Thee Oney Have I Sinned. 153 

which, when you see their incorrect answers, you try 
to fling away or burn them in the grate if you may ? 
Did you ever do that? When we come to face our 
true selves honestly, we will look at our religion as 
it is. Are you sensitive to the virtues? Are you 
like a finger with the nail removed which is ail 
quick? Are you sensitive to the light of God as a 
sensitized plate to the sun? Do you hear God's 
voice in your slumbers and dreams? And in your 
waking, does His voice appeal to you above the 
melee of the throng? Does your heart's love natu- 
rally revert to Jesus Christ, as a man or woman re- 
verts to the thought of some one loved most, ab- 
sent in travel, or gone in a far foreign land? Does 
your life as naturally go to God, as little children 
run back home with clamor and rejoicings? Does 
your life as naturally swing to the cadences of God 
as the brooks along the bewildering highway under 
the shadow of the trees, out in the open meadow 
land, wander toward the river, and from the river 
to the sea, but have forever-more the laughter of 
spring time's music in their voices? Do you know 
what it is to have a circle at home for prayer? I 
think if there is any great mistake in life, it is, not 
to have a circle at home for prayer. 

Did you ever on cold winter nights, gather your 



154 Eternity in the Heart. 

children and wife together close around the grate? 
And the fire sparkled, and the wood crackled and 
ran out in flames, and the strange beds of coals be- 
gan to build themselves in stately castles, and fashion 
themselves in a strange glow, and the little children 
said, "This is a king coming; and this is a Knight 
riding his horse to battle ; and here is a queen going 
to her wedding ;" and you can see all sorts of beauty 
in the coals ; and you sit close together ; your wife 
is beside you, and your little children about you, — 
the least child on your left arm, and the next on your 
knee, — it was sweet to do that, wasn't' it? Well, 
it is a good deal sweeter to get all your loved be- 
longings around a family altar and begin to pray to 
God. I think when breakfast is over, or when din- 
ner at night is done, and all the business of the day 
is concluded, and we know the night is upon us and 
the stars are watching, after an evening's enjoy- 
ment of social intercourse, I think it is so sweet to 
get your wife and children, and the folks that are 
neighborly with you, — the dear old mother if God 
has spared her, the white-haired father, the friends 
who have come to visit with you, — and gather to- 
gether in a little circle so you could touch each 
others hands, and read stanzas out of God's Book, — 
because God's book flows into poetry, so that I think 



Against Thee; Only Have I Sinned. 155 

all its verses are stanzas to the singing heart, — and 
kneel there, and catch each others' hands, and make 
your prayer to God, and feel that Heaven is not re- 
mote, but neighborly, and Christ is not yonder so 
much as here. I call that a family circle swinging 
around the great unhindered and unhinderable God. 
If indeed you shall test your life so that it may 
come to the accuracies of the delineation of the Gos- 
pel, how will it appear to you? Here was a man 
who looked himself in the eyes, and found himself 
ashamed, debased, and on the earth — that was how 
he was. It is a good thing in my estimation to get 
so straight a look at yourself in your own life's 
history as that you will be ashamed. Shame is the 
gate-way into the City of God. You can not get a 
self-sufficient personality into an open life. You 
can not rescue people from evil, and lift them up 
to God until they know their life is evil. When 
this man saw himself, then he was flung 
prostrate on the earth, like a man weeping 
at the grave of his wife in the dreary cemetery, — 
then he cried aloud until God heard him; and God 
was sorry for him. You must have a full view of 
yourself in order to have a full view of God. God 
never becomes consequential until yourself become 
inconsequential. You will never know how to gird 



156 Eternity in the Heart. 

up your poor garments and speed on lightly until 
your life out-runs the winds, unless you know your 
step is slow and perfunctory. You will never under- 
stand God's capacity until you understand your own 
incapacity. My life, my soul, my desire, my possi- 
bility of enlargement, my possibility for manhood 
in my own life, can only come in proportion as I 
know I am only an empty pitcher spilled clean dry 
of water; and if God take me not up and dip me 
down into his living springs and pelucid pools, and 
bring me out clear full, I had given no drink to 
thirsty folks that would die without. 

I said to a little body the other day, "You for- 
got something, did n't you ?" and she said, "I do n't 
know," and I said, "You forgot to wash our face, 
didn't you?" And she said, "I didn't forget it, I 
didn't want to wash my face." That is quite an 
accurate statement of many cases. Sometimes we 
do n't know we are foul and so do n't care to go 
through the cleansing process. Sometimes, we 
do n't care to be clean. But look yourself straight 
in the eyes, — that is the word, that is the necessity, — 
come straight here, look yourself in the face, and, 
knowing what sort of man or woman you are ; know- 
ing your deficiencies; knowing how God sees you 
fail; knowing God's conception of manhood and 



Against Thee Only Have I Sinned. 157 

womanhood; and seeing what God had in expecta- 
tion for you, and knowing- how you fail; then you 
will go down on your face, and your sobs will leap 
so far, and your crying will be so mighty, as that 
you will get the ear of God, and God will help you. 
I confess to this company I like the old time 
nomenclature of our church. We used to talk about 
"Conviction." That meant conviction of sin. People 
knew they were sinners. I think the great moral 
defect of our particular time of the world is that 
we do n't know we are sinners. You could not per- 
suade a man that he was a sinner if you would take 
a year to argue with him. He is self-palliative; 
he expiates himself ; he doffs his duties as he does his 
hat or coat in the evening; he says, "I am not as 
bad as other people ; he glows on himself ; he is self- 
satisfied, like a man warming his hands before the 
fire. There is no colossal goodness of life possible 
without an obtruding conviction of sin. Sometimes 
when I hear an old man pray, I hear phrases I 
haven't heard for years. I confess I like them. 
They come to me like bits of forgotten music, only 
when I hear the strain on the streets, my own lips 
unconsciously begin to swing the music out as I 
would begin to swing a perfume censer to and fro, 
and watch the smoke go up and breathe across the 



158 Eternity in the Heart. 

dome. We are sinners: God is not. We are lost! 
HE is not. We are weary ; He is untired. We are 
impotent; He is omnipotent: and it is only in pro- 
portion as we get Him and us together; as we see 
the things we are not, and the things He is; as 
we learn what is the retinue God means \ve shall 
have as we march toward the City of God ; it is only 
so, life can aggrandize itself and become glorious. 

When we are down on the earth ; when our head 
is bowed; when our lips are in the dust; when our 
cries go moaning out; when our mouths say no 
word of justification, only our anguish oozes from 
our lips, and we say, "God be merciful to me. I 
am a sinful man. Leave me not here or I die;" 
when we come to such a place as that, God is laugh- 
ing. He is not laughing AT you, but FOR you. 

You take a leper with his snow-white leprous 
face, his rasp of voice, his hateful acclimatization 
to disease ; he wont come near you, but he will call 
with his uncomely speech and with his strident 
voice and say, "Leper! Leper! Unclean, Unclean!" 
And he wont come near, only if you go nigh, he 
will clamor all the more, "Leper ! Unclean ! ! Go 
by me ! \" And when a man or woman calls, "I 
am leprous white from head' to foot ; ashamed from 
heart to flesh and flesh to heart, then it is the great 



Against Thee Only Have; I Sinned. 159 

God laughs and is glad; and some of his choir set 
a singing a new song; for they are saying, "He is 
not far from the Kingdom." 

I appeal to you this morning : Do you know what 
conviction of sin is? Do you know how far your 
life fails of being God's life? Do you know what 
stature God hath? Do you know his feet are fine 
brass as in a blazing furnace? Do you know he is 
girded about the paps with a golden girdle? Do 
you know his face out-shines the morning when the 
sky is clear? Did you ever see God, and did you 
turn your eyes away, bankrupt of hope? And did 
you feel your virtue evaporate like the hoar frost 
when the sun blisters down upon it his angry kiss? 

David had a definite conviction of sin because 
he knew he was naught. He beheld God, and was 
so ashamed of his own life, he was so weary of his 
own turpitude, that his heart was closed to all hope : 
and God came and lifted him up and gave him one 
more chance, and said, "I will give you one chance 
more ;" and David said, "You wont." And He said, 
"By my Son, I will give you one chance more." 
And he said, "But you wont." And He said, "By 
my saving grace and by my character, I will give 
you one more chance." And David looked at him 
and wept scalding tears, and said, "O, but you 



160 Eternity in the Heart. 

wont/' And He said, "I will." And he said, "You 
can not." And God said, "I will, I will give you 
another chance." And he said, "O, but you wont 
give me another chance?" And God said, "I will 
give you another chance," AND HE GAVE IT TO 
HIM. 

Beloved, I wish you would straitly conceive this 
proposition this morning-: the text says, SIN OP- 
ERATES ONLY AGAINST GOD. This man had 
sinned agains Uriah; he had sinned against Bath- 
sheba ; he had sinned against his own kingdom ; and 
when he came to himself and understood his crime, 
he said, "I have n't done any sin against anybody 
but God." In other words, what I would have you 
consider is, sin is mono-directional (if I may coin 
a word), it hath but one direction. It does not run 
out like the radii of a circle. It simply has one sole 
road that leads only from the soul-life to God : and 
God says, "Your sin is against me; your life is to 
me." How great that thought is ! How penetra- 
tive to the very core it is. Sin is man's uprising 
against God. Now the plain truth is (I don't say 
it to our discouragement or discourtesy), we say 
one class of sin is against God^ and one against 
man ; and God says, "All sin is against Me." I am 
not sinning against the little child when I turn her 



Against Thee Only Have I Sinned. 161 

from the door, I am sinning against the little child's 
God. My little child, when I have treated it harshly 
and called out raspingly, "Do n't come in here, do n't 
you see I am getting a sermon up ?" the little midge 
goes away crying. Thank God, that thing has never 
been among my sins. Parents, do n't turn your little 
children away when they are hungry to see you. 
Do n't get so engaged with books or work that you 
haven't time to be re-engaged with your children. 
A woman belongs to a club, and her little child calls, 
"Mamma," and peeps in at the door, and she 
"Why child, run away! Don't you know Mamma 
is writing a paper for the club?" I think some 
women will put off dying to get their club paper 
"writ." And it wont be worth much when done. 
I get so vexed over these protrusions of little things 
into the midst of life's great things, I don't know 
what to do. We have n't time for the little prom- 
ontories of small things to come out into our sea 
of life's great business. Your little children first! 
Do n't turn them away. Any sermon you could get 
up would be better because you stopped to kiss your 
baby three times before you got to your "thirdly," 
and the crowd wont care if you never get to your 
"thirdly." And you, man sitting at your books in 
there: your book-keeping will be quite as beauti- 
ii 



162 Eternity in the Heart. 

fully accurate, and your balance sheet will be quite 
as correct, if you stop a little while to talk with your 
wife and pet her when she comes in to smooth the 
wrinkles out of your forehead and pushes back your 
hair, and says, "You 'd better rest awhile Dear/' 
and you say, "Your bills are coming in the first of 
the month, and I can't rest." Remember what I 
tell you : stop a little while, and your fingers will be 
quicker, your brain a little swifter, and your books 
be balanced up as well. You do n't lose anything in 
life's long run by doing the major things first. 
Never ! 

God knows our life should be one-directioned, 
and that on the way to God. All things synchronize 
then, and we are not doing things with the little child 
or with the poor man at our door ; we are not doing 
business, in the conception of the great God, in one 
building or on one street, we are not doing business 
out at the stock yards or in the factory, we are doing 
business, not with factories over the States, but we 
are doing business with God. That is our one great 
business. That is perennial because He is there. 
And he says, "How are the books to-day ? How do 
the accounts balance? How is the inventory com- 
ing out this year? You are doing business with 
Me/' 



Against Thee Only Have I Sinned. 163 

Don't you know, with such a conception, life 
grows sublime? We are not selling goods to New 
York, or sending our goods North, South, East or 
West; we are not taking trade from Cincinnati, or 
from Louisville, or St. Louis, or from Chicago or 
Cleveland, but we are doing business with God, 
and our whole life fronts him as the world fronts 
the dawn. The world never turns its back on the 
dawning, never looks away from the coming of the 
morning. 

"Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned." I 
remember to have read the story of "The Deem- 
ster." I trust you have read it too, because it is a 
story of the struggle of a heart to get the upper- 
hand of itself; and that is always the biggest fight 
known to the soul of man. It is the story of a man 
who was not bad, but blustery; who had never the 
art to control himself and make his own hand an- 
swer to his own spirit. He went from looseness to 
looseness, till by and by he committed a crime which 
was not in his heart to commit ; and by the course of 
law this man was banished and lived alone. No- 
body's face to look at ; nobody's hand to touch ; no- 
body's voice to hear; nobody's eyes to make him 
glad; no sun-rise but the sun-rise of the sun; no 
evening but the evening of the sky. Were you ever 



164 Eternity in the Heart. 

banished like that? Were you ever away irom 
human beings altogether? Did you ever know soli- 
tude that completely shut you off from life's minis- 
try and mercy? When you are sick, somebody sits 
in the next room, and you can bear to be ill because 
you know you are not all alone : you cry with feeble 
voice, "Come here a minute," or you touch the bell, 
and somebody comes running with quiet but eager 
feet into your room, and you can bear it to be ill. 
But O, to be all alone and dying; to be on a water- 
logged ship, floating alone, and nobody this side of 
Heaven to hear your cry! Here was a man, and 
he thought his life had many directions ; he thought 
his sin was against the man and the lovers and 
friends of him he had slain: and he found there 
were but two people in the universe, and one of 
them was God, and one of them was himself. Hear 
me! That is a great, grave, and prodigious con- 
clusion : you and God ; that is all. In the big room 
of life, two folks; in the big room of conscience, 
two folks; in the big room of foul sin, 
two folks; in the big room of compunction 
of conscience, two folks! "Against Thee, Thee 
only, have I sinned :" and Dan, in "The Deemster," 
yonder with nobody, — There was the froth of the 
sea whitening on the rocks ; there was the sea gull's 



Against Thf,e Only Have: I Sinned. 165 

wild call sometimes by day and sometimes by dark ; 
there were the tall cliffs of the Isle of Man, and 
there was the Calf of Man round which the raging 
billows shook and broke themselves in foaming 
splendor ; there was where winters broke in storms ; 
and there was where the summer sang its own 
music in unspeakable sweetness. He could see the 
fishers' boat, but he must not go to it. Yonder were 
his own people, but he must not go nigh them. Not 
far away was the woman he loved and for whom he 
longed, but he must not see or think of her. The 
only person, the only neighbor to his soul, was God. 
By and by when his lips were being glued together, 
because he had no one to speak to, he said, "If 
I talk not with Him, I die," and he learned to pray, 
because he was being robbed of his speech: and 
Beloved, that is the only way you can keep your best 
speech, your poet's eloquence and gift, it is by talk- 
ing to God. And that man found out that he and 
God were the only people in the world. As soon 
as he found that out, all was found out. And then 
he heard how the people who had banished him were 
in great distress and dying. Then he and God, the 
only folks in his life, began computing the same 
great reckoning and carrying on the same indus- 
try, and he went out and healed the folks and came 



166 Eternity in the Heart. 

back to die: and the God that had stood by him 
nights when he came to Him, stood by him in the 
night of death; and his death was as beautiful as 
morning breaking over the sea. 

"Against Thee, and Thee only, have I sinned." 
To Thee, Thee only will I live. Thou art the cir- 
cumference within which my life revolves. Thou 
art He toward whom my objectifications of purpose 
run. Thou art He toward whom my prayer swings 
out censer-wise. Thou are He toward whom my 
hand service goes. Thou are the road-way of my 
journey, and the holy Jerusalem of my pilgrimage. 

A great life always culminates in this : we live to 
God, and we live to Him daily. We live to him in 
our house work, and in our correspondence, in our 
philanthropies and in our industries, in our slumber 
and in our waking; we live to Him when we sing 
our psalms and make our prayers and read our 
Bibles; we live to Him when we read our great 
poems, and when we read the daily doings in the 
news papers; we live to Him when we sing our 
babies to sleep; we live to Him when we are giv- 
ing medicine to the sick, or taking care of the aged 
and infirm; we live to Him when we are doing our 
petty chores that nobody knows or remembers; we 
live to Him when we are handling state-craft, and 



Against Thee Only Have I Sinned. 167 

shaping destinies for the world ; we live to Him. It 
is between God and us. All else is void. There is 
nothing" between Him and me. Believe me, a life 
like that is sublime. There are no things inconse- 
quential; everything is great, dignified, full of so- 
briety and wonder. And interesting things become 
glorified as if they flashed and burned like splendid 
gems,- and you caught them and held them to the 
light, and the world and all Heaven was in them. 

"Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned," — and 
beyond all that, to Thee, Thee only, will I live ; and 
Thee, Thee only, shall I serve; and toward Thee, 
Thee only, shall I walk ; and with Thee, Thee only, 
is my comfort ; and for Thee, Thee only, is my serv- 
ice ; and in Thee, Thee only, is my hope. Thou art 
my day- dawn from on High : Thou art my glory, un- 
speakable, eternal; Thou are the Resurrection of 
my life; Thou art my soul's hope, to-day and to- 
morrow, and the day after, forever ! 

This is life, and this is the Gospel. May God 
help us so we may understand the mono-direction 
of life; that all paths are one, they lead to Him or 
from Him. THAT way? HE is THIS way. That 
way, why it is growing dark: that way, why the 
stars are dim ; that way, why, the shadows thicken : 
that way, why, the gloom is infernal : that way, why, 



168 Eternity in the Heart. 

there is a moan upon the lip, and the breaking of 
the heart: go not that way, my soul. What way is 
it? That way is the way from God. Go not that 
way, my Soul. "Against Thee, Thee only, have I 
sinned," — go not that way, my Soul. 

Take the high opportunity of life, and get God 
to help you go THIS way. Go THIS way, why, 
it is daylight now : go THIS way, why, it is sun-up 
now : go THIS way, why, there is growing in the 
midst a glory that I dreamed not of: go THIS way, 
HE is coming, GOD ! clad in light like a garment : 
and He hath a crown lighted with ten thousand 
gems upon his forehead, and behind Him, are the 
singing saints of God (not a surfeit of singing), 
but behind Him are the singing saints of God, — O ! 
Toward THEE, Thee only, shall I live ! And for 
THEE, Thee only, shall be my life here, here-after 
and for-ever, and for-ever! Amen. 

PRAY BR. 

SO, Lord, as we began our service, so we conclude it; 
we talk with Thee when we begin, and when we conclude. 

O, precious Christ, help us to know what the Church 
is for, — help us to know what this Church is for: and may 
the Church of God stimulate our thought, and fertilize 
the Held where our ideas are sown; and make youth and 
old age to be always at home; and find youth's hope; and 
stimulate every lordly endeavor in the heart; and teach 



Against Thus Only Have: I Sinned. 169 

us that God is neighborly to us; and lift us up so we may 
come to Him, and He may come to us; and may the house 
of God rain quiet rain like rain at night upon our dry 
spirits, and make them damp like fallow land where 
Spring-time comes: and on our winter* blow with Thy 
breath of June, and thaw our snow and ice away, and 
make life to know flower banks like the dear Spring doeth 
to-day. 

O, God, give us all we need; give us laughter in 
abundance; give us delight to mix with our tears; give us 
God's help in our mission here, and after azvhile, give us a 
home in Heaven, and the sight of Christ, and the laughter 
of the angels, and the companionship of the just, and the 
folding in with our dear ones who outran us a little, and 
are come before us to the Land of God: and there we 
will love Thee, mid love to love Thee t in Christ's name, 
Amen. 



VII. 

REMEMBER. 

PRAYER. 

WE have read, God, that all of our deeds are writ' 
ten in a Book; and -we are frank to say, we don't want 
to see the Book. If we were to look upon its pages, it 
would burn our eye balls like lightning sent full in the 
face. Our life, our service, our lack of service, our serv- 
ing wrong masters, our thinking unrighteous thoughts, 
our following unworthy motives, our esteeming low ideals 
to be better than high, — all these things would be written 
in the Book, and we are ashamed of them. O, God, in Thy 
pity, destroy the Book; do something to it; spill Christ's 
blood upon it, — do that and we shall be satisfied. O, God, 
pity us! We have many blemishes; ten thousand, thou- 
sand failures would not begin to account for the wreck- 
ages we have made. All we can do now is to trust to 
Christ and begin afresh. 

O, God, help us to-night to REMEMBER; to remem- 
ber that here we are a little while, and there we are a 
long while; to remember that our future depends upon 
our present; to remember we are making our own des- 
tiny; to remember that God wants us to be good; to re- 
member that Christlikeness of spirit is an open sesame to 
every good in this life and in the life to come. 

O, Lord, breathe on us, we pray Thee, a spirit of con- 
siderateness, of thoughtful-mindedness. O, make to-night 
salubrious in its climate for the growth of every good in- 
tention, and the rooting of every good desire, and the 
170 



Remember. 171 

flowering of every good purpose. In so much as we have 
failed to-day, help us to-morrow not to fail wherein we 
have failed before, but may we remember past procrasti- 
nations and deficiencies and deflections from the path of 
right, and may we learn to be more on our guard. 

Keep us in good temper, — keep us in good temper with 
the world, and with each other; keep us from irascibility, 
from coarseness of thinking, and O, God, keep us ten 
thousand leagues from coarseness of speech: may the 
words of our lips, and the deepest thinkings of our deep- 
est natures be white and acceptable in God's sight. 

Lord, God, bless the soldiers. It is getting near Memo- 
rial Day. Let no one of us, young or middle-aged, or old, 
forget how much we owe to the men that fought for the 
integrity of the Union. If we forget them and their serv- 
ice, "May our right hand forget its 'cunning, and our 
tongue cleave to the roof of our mouth." It is because 
of them, the country we love and has given us nutriment 
and helped us to our prosperity of life and outlook on 
destiny, — it is because of these men that this country 
still lives. God bless every old soldier! If Thou canst 
not heal his wounds, (for some of them are very deep and 
lacerated), give him an outlook for Eternal Life, and grant 
that every old soldier may come to be a "soldier of the 
Cross." Bless any women that are soldiers' widows; bless 
any that are soldiers' orphans; anybody who has graves 
in the cemetery to decorate, — graves of those that used 
to fight for their country's honor, and the maintenance of 
righteousness for God and man, — God bless them! 

Bless our country, make it great for good. Make us 
all good, so that we shall all be after God's manifest no- 
tion of greatness. And after awhile, may we hear the 
bugle of the morning of God blowing, and the answering 
of the cry, "Here am I," and may God say, "I am looking 
for you, and you are come," we pray, for Christ's sake, 
Amen. 



172 Eternity in the Heart. 



"Son, remember!" — Luke xvi, 25. 

IF anybody were to say "Remember the future," 

you would laugh at him and think he had perpe- 
trated a sorry jest. You would accuse him of being 
a sort of ignorant humorist. You would say that 
memory concerned itself solely with the PAST; 
that its business was, to retain in its grasp and hand 
to life, the YESTERDAYS of our experience. I 
do not deny this is the major function of memory ; 
but we are not to suppose, because memory is one 
thing, that it could not also be another thing. 

This advice I give you tonight taken from the 
Book of God, is, "Son, remember;" gather up your 
life; hold it up; look at it! And then, you have a 
life that is not yet lived; a tomorrow, on whose 
door-step, you have not stood, — take THAT up and 
look at it ; remember tomorrow ! 

Now, nobody understands memory; everybody 
has it. We say we have "treacherous memories." 
We have. Some men can not remember people they 
owe. Some people have marvelously retentive mem- 
ories for people owing them, — I have found that to 
my sorrow. But we talk about "treacherous memo- 
ries." We remember a great many things, — I am 



Remember. 173 

apt to believe we remember more things than we 
forget ; that more things stay in the sieve of memory 
than go through it. 

We don't understand memory. We have read 
psychologies about it, and they have left us where 
we began. No psychologist understands how we 
remember, all he can tell us is that we do, and we 
knew, that before he told us. We do recollect things. 
God has made the human intelligence so fertile in 
resource, so massive in its build, so commanding 
in its powers, as that we do remember. Our yester- 
days do n't flow from us. We go through life, and 
hold life by the shoulders, and the thing we saw a 
thousand yesterdays ago, we see tonight, — here it 
is! If we did not remember, life would be like a 
prisoner's cell, poor in compass, dark in atmosphere. 
We DO remember. Soul-life is one great ampli- 
tude of movement and of power. 

Now, some travelers go through their journeys 
in the summer time with a kodak, and they squint 
it on everything. There are kodak fiends as there 
used to be autograph fiends. If people have a kodak 
and have sense enough to use it, it is nice to have it, 
but they ought to have some sense, and then may be 
they would n't have a kodak : but if you have sense, 
you can have a kodak, and go through the avenues 



174 Eternity in the Heart. 

of the brave summer time, — what are you doing? 
Taking pictures of things so that when you go home, 
you may have memories. 

I have a friend who .went to Norway a few 
summers ago, and in that bewildering atmosphere, 
and in those noble fiords where the sea angers at 
the base of the great declivities but never lifts its 
voice to the summit though its roar is like the fren- 
zied wrath of angry giants, he went along the fiord 
passes and along the wide summits, and where they 
flung their massive and imposing shadows that 
minded man of eternity, and he climbed the long 
passes over the great ragged hedgeways, and he 
caught the memories of that strange, sweet, won- 
drous land, and fetched them home : and if you were 
to go to his house tomorrow, he would take you 
through Norway the Wonderful. You can hear 
the sea mutter in its anger, and sing in its gladness ; 
you can see the long sliding cliff lean up beyond 
the morning; you could see the long lean of the 
rafterless sky as it leaned over the world and never 
fell upon it when it quivered as the thunders rolled 
along its empty roof ; you can see that : that is mem- 
ory. We are carrying kodaks; we go through our 
yesterdays and fetch our yesterdays with us. While 
I am talking here tonight, you are rambling down 



Remember. x 75 

the long lanes of life. Can you remember when yon 
were a child? You are getting old, but try it, — do. 
I can remember, — my earliest recollection was this : 
a dead woman's face, and she was my Mother. I 
never see her face flushed with life, and her eyes 
glad with the sunlight of that infinite mercy called 
a mother's love, — I never see that, but only the 
dull, cold marble, passionless as if it had forgotten 
the beauty of love. And then, I can remember when 
my Father brought me over the Rocky Mountains, 
over the long trail of the plains, when I "trecked" in 
those days, a little lad of three or thereabout; and 
the Indians hanging along the horizon, and the 
teamsters banding together and setting their watches 
by day and night, and the long sways of the meadow 
grasses hit upon by the hunger of the wind, — I can 
remember it. In the morning of life ! 

You can remember your life, can you ? Bring it 
all back, all the way along from childhood to woman- 
hood, and from happy wifehood to desolate widow- 
hood, all along from happy childhood and dancing 
feet, to weary years and faltering steps. O, Be- 
loved, believe me, memory is sweet mercy: it has a 
hand to bring us flowers and wormwood; it has a 
hand to bring us voices sweet and true and voices 
jangled like instruments out of tune; it fetches the 



176 Eternity in the Heart. 

voices of the thunderbolt, and the sweet singing of 
lips long dead but never forgotten. Memory is 
such a mercy. Ij is bitter-sweet. Have you seen 
the bitter-sweet berries in the Autumn or Winter 
time hang their blood red clusters in the woods? 
O, you don't need the Autumn woods to find the 
bitter-sweet, it is hanging in great clusters in your 
memory, — you can not forget it. How sweet your 
yesterdays were ! How peerless, how youthful, 
how vigorous, how invigorating, how splendid in 
audacity, how cruel in lack of conviction of your 
divine power! Yesterday. 

But there is n't any yesterday, it is all TODAY, 
— don't you know that? All yesterdays, by the 
grace of memory, are here and now, — there is n't 
any past, it is all present. Here and now! Bring 
all your yesterdays, beckon to them out of the shad- 
ows; here they come trooping up, thousands of 
them, ten thousand, — poor ghostly, withered faces, 
with gray locks and tattered garments, as if they 
had been sleeping where "moth and rust doth cor- 
rupt;" bring all your yesterdays; here they stand, 
gray troops, like a resurrected army around their 
leader. That is memory. 

Don't you remember, you woman, when you 
first met your lover that came to be your husband ? 



Remember. 177 

Who forgets it? I think you must have a senile 
memory if you don't remember that. But you re- 
member where you first saw him, with his rugged 
strength, his sweet courage, his tender smile; and 
his chin was so strong, and his lips so tender, — and 
when you looked at the man's chin, you thought, 
there was might, irrepressible ; and when you looked 
at the man's laughter-laden lips, you thought the 
god of love had leaned over and kissed him on the 
mouth ! How long ago since you met him ? No 
odds. It is as fresh and sweet and beautiful as if it 
were last night, isn't it? Surely! Bless God for 



memory 



Man, do you remember when you first met your 
wife? She made fun of you, that is what she did. 
Women are funny, they make fun of a man one 
month, and love him to death the next month. It 
is n't all in getting started, understand. But, she 
made fun of you. She was sitting back in the cor- 
ner, and you came in, a long, green, gawky thing 
that did n't know what hands were for, and you 
picked up her handkerchief, bowing in that excru- 
ciating way a young fellow is likely to bow, and 
she giggled, and you got spunky and liked her. 
And then you got more spunky and made love to 
her night after night; and by and by, she said, "I 
12 



178 Eternity in the Heart. 

was just fooling with you. I liked you all the time," 
she said, "I liked you all the time." O, well, men, 
we do n't get so gray nor care-worn that we do n't 
remember those good, sweet yesterdays; they are 
the associates of today, they are adjacent to now. 
God's mercy is, we DO remember. Yesterday is 
not remote from us. And down the long, long, echo- 
ing past, there are patterings of feet, and the music 
of voices, and the calling of your name, and, "Come 
closer, quick ! Come closer, quick !" and it is whose 
voice? HIS. And in your dreams, you hear it, and 
in your slumbers' depth; you can hear it waking; 
you can hear it under the moonlight and star light ; 
you can hear it under the glory of the noon light, — 
you can hear it : you remember ! And so, God makes 
life a progressive series; He links -all our life to- 
gether by the cords of this one thing, memory. We 
shall remember days we wish we might forget; and 
then there are days we pray God in Heaven we 
might remember forever. 

But mark you, we must remember not only the 
pa,s t. but the future. Memory must not turn its 
back upon tomorrow and stand upon the wreck of 
today and say, "That is life." Memory must hold 
the skein of yesterday, and hold the skein of to- 
day, and so it is a part of tomorrow. Life has con- 



Remember. 179 

tinuity. Time is divided by calendars and almanacs 
into months and years and centuries, into lustrum 
and decade, into thousand and ten thousand years : 
but God does not measure so ; He sees just a ripple 
on the sea of years, and now we call it time, and 
time is a ripple on the sea of Eternity, — that is it. 

Today is an isthmus, — that is what today is. 
Today is an isthmus connecting yesterday with to- 
morrow. As the Isthmus of Panama connects two 
great continents, the chilly north with the burning 
tropics, the long winding chain of the Rocky Moun- 
tains with the tremendous bulk and altitudes of the 
Andes, so the isthmus of today connects what I was 
with what I will be, what I loved with what I shall 
love, my dead self with my living, potent, tomorrow. 
You dare affirm you can remember tomorrow, — it is 
a part of you. Look it in the face. You must. 
Do n't look yonder forever, look YONDER ; do n't 
look where the shadow is, look where the shadow 
will flee; don't look where the heart faints with 
despair, look where the heart sings with laughter, — 
look YONDER! 

REMEMBER. Remember the laws that govern 
life ; remember the rules that make destiny j remem- 
ber the credence of character, remember that our 
yesterdays are its beginning, and our tomorrow its 



180 Eternity in the Heart. 

conclusion; remember God's logic is one, — you can 
not tear His syllogisms apart; you can not have a 
major premise and minor premise without the con- 
clusion, — they are linked together like hooked steel 
whose iron teeth can not be removed except you kill 
the flesh they settle themselves into. We are to re- 
member that we must remember. Will you under- 
score that word in your thought? Remember, son, 
that you must remember. In other words, remember 
you can not forget. Well, what odds ? Great odds. 
Remember, — you can not forget, — that is the 
peril, therefore, that is the triumph, there- 
fore. The odds are great, just according. It 
is a peril if you find your past bad, and 
it is a glory if you find your past good. Re- 
member, men and women, you can not forget. You 
can not put away memory like you give away an 
old hat. If you have a half dozen old hats, you pile 
them up or hang them around, and forget where you 
put them; but your wife comes around at house 
cleaning time, and she will find all of them. She 
will say to you, "I KNEW you had a hat. I knew 
you did n't need to buy a new one. I told you so/' 
Well, you can put your old hat away like that. You 
can put your winter hat off when it comes spring, 
though I find very few have sense enough to know 



Remember. 181 

when spring" comes. Well, now, you can your old 
hat off when you do n't want it, or when it loses 
style, or when some good, gentle 220 pounder sits 
on it. I would n't wear it much after that, the thing 
is n't convenient. But people that put their hats 
around on seats, ought to have them sat on. That 
is my mind. But you can not put off memory that 
fj way. You can burn books ; you can not burn mem- 
I ory; you can bar doors; you can not bar the door 
of memory. King Canute sat himself upon the shore 
where the tides rolled madly in to show his fulsome 
and foolish courtiers their delusions and commanded 
the waves to go back, and the waves dashed up the 
shore and smote with frothing, muttering wrath at 
his feet. That is memory. You can not drive it back. 
When Xerxes would cross the Hellespont, he 
scourged the waves of the sea, and said, "Rave no 
more, rave no more. I am your master:" and he 
thought them conquered ; and they smote with their 
two angry palms and broke his bridges of boats 
to fragments, and scattered them in wreckage on the 
shore; and the sea had its way. That is memory. 
You can not stop memory. It is like the incoming 
tide with its laughter, its singing, its caresses, its 
utter execrations in storm time. We shall call, "Be- 
gone !" We shall say, "I will bind you with chains I" 



1 82 Eternity in the Heart. 

No matter. The tide will swing in at its own sweet 
will, when it comes time, it will swing out, — no odds 
to you. That is memory. You can not stop it. 

If you have a ghastly memory, you can not 
thrust it out of doors and say, "No more of this ! 
Have done !" You can thrust a man out, and bar 
the door ; but you can not put memory out of doors : 
he moves like the shadows ; he comes like the light ; 
he will not be put out. Remember, you can not 
forget. Do n't forget that now. 

Somethings before God you would want to re- 
member, and some things, before God, you would 
care to forget. You would say, "No more of that! 
No more of that !" Do n't you think Macbeth, King 
of Scotland, would have liked to have forgotten the 
bloody tragedy by which he won his crown? And 
he said, "No more of that! No more of that!" — 
and laughter was in his eyes, and laughter was on 
his lips, and murder within his heart, and he could 
not forget. Don't forget that, man. You can not 
forget, — God wont let you. The coming of your 
yesterdays is like the tramp of a conquering army, 
and they will walk into your heart and stay there. 
You can not send them off. 

KingJ^ar would have been glad if he might 
have forgotten that on the day he abdicated his 



Remember. 183 

throne, he cursed Cordelia and sent her from him. 
And she was all he had ! And he could not forget 
it ! In his madness, he remembered it ; in his death, 
he muttered it. You can not forget. 

In other words, life is such a thing as is putting 
up on the shelves of your soul, things you are going 
to use tomorrow. You WILL use them, never fear. 
Be sure of that. You will use them. You can not 
help it. What you put on the shelves of your life, 
you will have to use tomorrow. You will be like 
the ants laying up their stores in the summer time 
for use in winter time. I warn you, men and women, 
and I warn my own heart as well, that what we are 
putting up on the shelves of life, we will have to 
have tomorrow. If they are covered with blood, 
our hands will be covered also; if they are moth 
eaten and scarred with time, we shall have an out- 
pour of the dust of years, but, take them down, we 
MUST. 

Your turpitude, your shame, your disloyalty, 
your infamies, your disregard of the holy amenities, 
your lack of high culture with regard to the things of 
God, your recklessness with regard to character, 
your misuse of divine things, — you must use them, 
you can not forget them. Would God, you might, 
but vou can not. A thousand yesterdays ago, you 



1 84 Eternity in the Heart. 

did a bad thing. Do you remember it ? Yes. And 
a thousand tomorrows from tonight, you will re- 
member it, — Oh, you can not forget it! What ails 
you, man ? Do n't you know you can not forget, you 
HAVE to remember. Remember, God Himself can 
not forget, though He can forgive. 

In one of those strange, rhapsodical movements 
of mind for which Hawthorne was so marked and 
memorable, he wrote "Mosses from an Old Manse," 
which I take to be still one of the greatest books 
ever written; and if you read this book you will 
light on a story there. You will find it is a story of 
a conflagration in which the world brought all it 
had of titles of dignitaries and ancestors, genealo- 
gies, statistics, policies, diplomas, literatures whether 
written by poets or preachers or sages or philoso- 
phers or what not, brought them all, and flung them 
on the same heap; and the things burned to dull 
embers, and then died to ashes, and then the wind 
puffed them away ; and some of the things would 
not burn ! Have a care ! Memory wont fail you. 
Some of these days, you will pray to God, "L,et me 
forget ! Let me forget P and you CAN NOT. 

I am not talking at random. There are young 
men and women here beginning life, — let me pray 
you, as one that regards your future and the sobriety 



Remember. 185 

of your experience, don't forget that you can not 
forget. Or, putting it in the positive regard, re- 
member that you must remember. 

O, some things, some things, they are so beau- 
tiful to remember. Joseph Parker is the greatest 
living preacher ; for a multitude of years his preach- 
ing in Holborn Viaduct has fired London. That 
man is of huge, strenuous frame and spirit. If you 
should read in his biography, you should find this; 
that when his wife went from him, he said, "I am 
suddenly become old, — I am suddenly become old! 
Yesterday, I was of age, today, I am aged," — and 
he remembered her. How sweet to have a holy 
memory in the heart. 

Thomas Carlyle remembered Jane Carlyle; and 
while I take no ground with regard to the festivi- 
ties these two used to have with Jane's scoldings 
and Thomas's counter remarking which were in- 
vidious, — I am not arguing which was to blame, 
or whether either was to blame, I am simply say- 
ing that when Jane died, then Thomas went walk- 
ing up and down Chelsea, — and you might have 
found an old, stooped, rugged-browned, white-locked 
man, mumbling to himself and wringing his hands 
together, and talking in his Scotch brogue, "Oh, 
would God she were with me. Bring her back. Oh, 



1 86 Eternity in the Heart. 

would God she were with me, — bring her back. Oh, 
would God ! she were with me. Bring- her back !" — 
and nobody could, but God, and God would not. If 
you have a beautiful memory, Beloved, O, cherish it. 

Did you ever think of Benedict Arnold in his old 
age setting out to count over what he possessed ? I 
do n't say he wanted to do it, I do n't say he did n't 
want to, I say he HAD to; that is odds different. 
You think you are going to do all you want to all 
the days of your life ? Poor fool ! Do n't you know 
you have got to do some thing? This man was 
counting over what he had : he had a tainted mem- 
ory, a blasted repute, a shamed name; his son was 
polluted because of him! he had disregard in Eng- 
land, and curses in America: and there he sat and 
told over his possessions, and everything he touched, 
blistered him like a living coal, and he could not 
put it down ; he wanted to, but he could not. That 
is memory. 

Sometimes I think of Mrs. General Grant. The 
other day a lady mentioned her to me and that 
brought back a memory. There was a good woman 
and true ; what she was, she is, — one of those sweet, 
wholesome femininities America can produce; and 
with no derogation to any other country, there is n't 
anv clime nor continent nor island which can pro- 



Remember. 187 

duce womanhood more chastely sweet, than America, 
— and there that woman is ; and tonight, you be sure, 
when that woman puts her hands together and makes 
her prayer, God will waft back to her, like the fra- 
grance of unforgotten and unforgettable summer, 
yesterdays imperishable as the stars, and made to be 
jewels in the casket of her heart. She will see the 
soldier- she loved. She will remember the enfolding 
of his arms and the kisses he brought her when 
peace was come; she will remember how she went 
around the world with him, and he was still the un- 
impeachable, manly, modest citizen ; she will remem- 
ber how the man loved her, looked out for her, 
prayed for her, remembered her in life, and in death 
turned his dim eyes her way and said, "Are you 
there ?" She remembers, tonight. Is n't it a goodly 
memory? O, Beloved, if you have good memories, 
thank God for them and multiply them; multiply 
them ; increase them a thousand fold ; make it your 
business to water the roots of the tree of good deeds 
so that your life shall bear fruit, so that with two 
hands you can pluck it; and before God, be thank- 
ful that you have a chance to become fruitful. You 
can not forget, — that is the word I utter. 

Remember that evil is very certain, and very 
prevalent. Will you hear me? Evil has more seeds 



1 88 Eternity in the Heart. 

to scatter than Maple trees have ; and last week, the 
Maple trees loosened their two hands and swung 
their seeds to every wind and said, "Sow them." 
Evil sows more seeds than dandelions do. When 
the wind comes and catches the Dandelions' white 
crests, it will sow dandelion fields to golden crops 
next spring time. 

Sometimes I have found people who did not like 
to have cherries on their place because they were 
such everlasting "spreaders ;" they sprout until there 
are dozens and twenties and hundreds: and some- 
times my father would send me out to dig them up 
which I did with a great deal of delight, — Uh, a 
great deal of delight. Evil sprouts more readily, 
and holds more tenaciously, than any cherry sprouts 
that ever gathered in your father's orchard. 

I have n't time to argue, and not much inclina- 
tion, but I do say a word of suggestion I think to be 
necessary, to this effect: don't you laugh at evil! 
Do n't you do it ! Do n't you deal with it as if it 
were a trick of a theological phrase. Sometime ago, 
somebody asked me if I believed in the Devil, and 
looked at me and laughed. We\\ t I am no fool. I 
told him I did. You think I have lived this long, 
and did n't know there was a Devil ? How would 
there be so many children if there was no father? 



Remember. 189 

You tell me that. People go around with their 
smartness and lucidity of folly, and say, "But the 
Devil is an exploded theory," — I tell you, wickedness 
is no myth. There are deviltries enough in Indian- 
apolis or Chicago or New York, or in Minneapolis 
there are deviltries enough to fill Hell, — and then 
you say, "Mr. Quayle, do you believe in the Devil ? 
Why, you goose, of course I do ! — you female goose. 
If there is a goose that is worse than a man goose, 
it is a woman goose. 

Now, listen to me ! Do n't think you can abol- 
ish drastic wickednesses by laughing at them, — you 
can not do it. I am no friend to the Devil, my chief 
business is to antagonize him; I would not belong 
to his fraternity, but when you talk about evil as if 
there were no evil, — when you carry on your ghastly 
jests, you are dealing in witticisms that God won't 
laugh at, there is n't any fun in that. Why should n't 
there be a devil ? Is n't there a power for righteous- 
ness, called, God ? Is n't there an organized power 
for evil ? May n't there be a head of the organized 
forces of evil? O, don't talk to me about evil, I 
am sick of evil! I see it on the left hand, and on 
the right hand; I go away down in its deep slime 
and horrid smells, — I know what evil is. If you 
want to find out if evil is very sure, and the devil 



190 Eternity in the Heart. 

sure, read the wrong book; and then come and tell 
me, as likely you will, "O, it is all imagination." 

I will tell you a thing that occurred not a thou- 
sand years ago, nor a thousand miles from here: a 
man murdered another and was sentenced to be 
hanged ; and a minister saw the man and tried to 
bring the man from his state of wickedness over to 
goodness, and he said that the man, every day, even 
on the morning he was to be hanged, LIED ; every 
word was a lie, and every breath a curse, — and then 
you say, "O, no, Mr. Quayle, evil is just a myth." 
Do n't be a fool, — unless you are a born fool, do n't ! 
If you are a born fool, you are n't responsible. 

You have got to reckon with evil, — you have got 
to deal with it ; it will sound its voice like the clamors 
of a drunken Hussar, — you have got to deal with it. 
I tell this congregation that the doctrine of hell is 
far from being effete, and the devil far from being 
dead. Evil is here : and so long as evil is here with 
its poluted breath, its salaciously pursed lips, with 
its lecherous glances, its hellish attitudes, with its 
utter diabolism, — so long as evil is here, I charge you 
to bear witness to your own life, it may be God has 
a place where evil hath chains put on its feet and 
wrists, — and I pray God, He has. I affirm, God is 
going to give righteousness a chance somewhere; it 



Remember. 191 

has n't had a good chance here ! Rem^iber that evil 
is very sure. 

I was reading* last week, — every eight or ten 
years, I read a book, and this last week, I was read- 
ing a book of a very wise theologian, — you know 
him, so I wont say who he was, — and he was laugh- 
ing at the notion of the Fall. He said that was 
"nonsense." He did n't come right out and say it, 
he went all the way round, took two pages to say 
what he could have said in much less space. He 
said that every fall was a "fall up." It is funny 
if every fall is a "fall up," how some people fall so 
low. Does n't that strike you as being a little 
curious? He said that we came from animals and 
that every leap of our life was toward righteousness. 
Rajah was here, — he was n't a nice cat, he was a cat 
you could n't worry, and a fine, big one he was. He 
was n't a nice cat, but nobody accused him of being 
irreligious, nobody said he was wicked: but you 
take a man with the capacity for blood, and the 
ability to slaughter that Rajah had, and you would 
say, "He was a devil," — and the common sense of 
humanity knows the difference between a brute and 
a man. A brute has no moral possibilities no moral 
comprehension; man has, — therefore, he is subject 
to moral rules ; he belongs to the ethical code of the 



192 Eternity in the Heart. 

Almighty God. Remember evil is very regnant, 
very apparent, very terrible. Men and women, be 
it far from you to deal frivolously with the awful 
evils in life. Do n't deal trivially with evil. 

Evil is so awful, so shameless as that when I 
look at it, all the laughter dies from my heart, and 
all the gladness dims out of my eyes, and it gets to 
be twilight and midnight. Evil is so rampant and 
long armed, and ready for its spring ; evil is so ter- 
rible with its horrid claw and its hellish heart! I 
wouldn't deal lightly with anything so frightful. 
There may be future retribution, — have a care ! 
Do n't laugh at it ! God knows it is so terrible, that 
to any sane heart, it brings peril. 

Remember this, again ; that the quick is just un- 
der the finger nail. Does that seem trivial to you? 
It is not. Did you ever tear your finger nail off? 
What a time you had to get another one on! It 
was no jest, was it? You have a quick right under 
your finger nail ; it is n't an eighth of an inch deep, — 
you have it, have you ? Listen to me ! Other people 
have a quick just as close to the surface as yours. 
Remember that. You don't want a fellow coming 
around with a sharp ax hacking at your fingers, do 
you ? Well, do n't you go hacking at other people's 
fingers. You are sensitive. That is what YOU 



Remember. 193 

are. You say, "I am sensitive." Remember other 
people are sensi-TlVE ! I have known some people 
who were so nervous, you couldn't whisper out in 
the garden without jarring their ears. Have you 
seen people like that? Very well, very well, quite 
true. Remember, there are very many nervous folks 
besides yourself. You do not like inuendoes nor 
slurs nor casting of the eye in a curious way, nor 
pursing out of the lip, nor saying, "O, yes, he is 
all right, but," — yes, you do n't like that, do you ? 
Remember that your finger nail has a quick right 
under it, and that other folks have quick and finger 
nail in equal adjacency as yours. Remember! Re- 
member ! 

Remember that GOD is the big word of history. 
You thought I would say, Theology ? I do n't. Re- 
member GOD is the big word of history. What is 
Babylon trying to say ? What is Nineveh trying to 
say? What is the Medo-Persian Empire saying? 
What is dead Egypt trying to say? The Obelisk, 
the Pyramids, the Sphinx, — what are they trying 
to say? What is the battered Parthenon trying to 
say? What is the ruined Acropolis telling? What 
is the Colosseum saying? What is the mighty Pan- 
theon upon one of the Seven Hills, saying? They 
are all saying, with clamorous chorus like the beat- 
13 



194 Eternity in the Heart. 

ing of cymbals when the storm is on, they are say- 
ing, "GOD." Now what history is talking about, 
do n't you be oblivious to. 

It is likewise the big word of life. God is the 
big word, and Christianity is his shadow. Chris- 
tianity is God's shadow. Where he goes, He will 
fling His shadow, and even His shadow is light. 
God is so great, engrossing, encompassing a word, 
He fills Heaven and earth. "God is the name my 
soul adores," say that, my soul, say that. God, — 
that is the big word in the Decalogue; that is the 
big word in the Old Testament ; that is the big word 
in the New Testament; that is the big word in 
Science rightly understood ; that is the big word in 
legislation rightly comprehended; that is the big 
word in universal experience ; that is the great word 
in conscience ; that is the great word in dreams and 
tragedies ; that is the big word in goodness. Now, 
anybody who is oblivious to the fact that God is in 
the universe, and in the world to stay, — has forgot- 
ten something he ought to have remembered above 
all things in the world. It is strange how long we 
live in the world, how slow we be. When the 
World's Fair was at Chicago, the World's Fair man- 
agers violated a plain business compact with the 
Government, and opened their show on the Sabbatl 



Remember. 195 

Day though they had agreed with the Government 
that they would not. So preparatory to the coming 
Fair at St. Louis, the Government bound the man- 
agers down with iron bands because they found that 
business men may have no business conscience. They 
tied them down and said, we will give a million dol- 
lars on condition of your keeping the Fair closed 
on the Sabbath Day. Chicago could have told any- 
body. "No more treading down the com- 
mon moral sentiment of American citizenship 
which is Christian and in favor of God's Day." It 
is poor business, — I am not talking about morality, 
—I say, it is poor BUSINESS. At Buffalo, because 
they could get a little gain if Sabbath trains spilled 
their crowds into their grounds with their Sabbath 
desecration, the managers are flying in the face of 
millions and millions of Christian people. It is very 
foolish. It is not a good business venture. The 
people who get on best in business are those that 
find business a partnership between man and God. 
Nations do not prosper that violate their code of 
honor with God. I would rather be doing a very 
little business and in partnership with the very big 
God, than doing a very big business and be in part- 
nership with a very little devil. I would rather be 
so poverty smitten that my coat was shiny, and the 



196 Eternity in the; Heart. 

seams were frayed deep, and the buttons glazed; I 
would rather be so as that people would look at me 
askance and say, "He will fail pretty soon, his busi- 
ness will go into the hands of the receiver ;" I would 
rather be that way and have my business go into the 
hands of the great Receiver whose name is God, 
than live in affluence and die in riches and plenty, 
and have my memory go into the hands of the Re- 
ceiver that is called "The Judge of all the Earth," 
and he would crack my repute in His hand as if it 
were an egg shell, and scatter the poor bits on the 
pavement of the Judgment Seat and say, "His name 
is naught." 

Now, God is the big word in history, and Chris- 
tianity is His shadow ; and life's big business is to 
walk with God. You think that is a side issue ? It 
is not. It is the main thoroughfare. Now, Relig- 
ion is, living in the presence of God. 

Did you ever read of the samphire gatherers? 
Do you know what samphires are ? Well, you may 
read it in the book, — and the story is this : that often 
times women gather samphires on the long, rugged 
declivities of the sea rocks, for the samphire vines 
grow in the crevices that lean out over the sea on 
the rocky ledges. And often times, you will find 
women at perilous heights, swinging by a rope at 



Remember. 197 

the belt, clinging with their fingers in the niches of 
the rock, where a slight slip would mean death; 
and she is gathering samphires, — not for lust of 
gain, but because she has little children that must be 
fed. And down, far below, so far below, she can 
scarce see the place where the little cottage is, there 
are little children; and she is far on the rocks, go- 
ing where the sea mists have made them slippery, 
and where the sea grasses are slanting toward the 
sea, and clinging against the rock, where the vines 
gather and make purple tracks as they make their 
way along the rock. She is gathering samphires, 
but she always sees the children, — whether the cot- 
tage be in sight or out of sight, whether the chil- 
dren be in doors or out of doors, — she sees the chil- 
dren, and she is gathering samphires for utter love 
of them. Beloved, that is a parable of goodness in 
Christian folks, — they are always doing, and they 
are always seeing God. As the samphire gatherer 
sees her children always in her perilous duties and 
toil, so people who love God always see Him. When 
they make their prayer, they see Him; when they 
do their washings of Mondays, they see Him ; when 
they do their work of charity, they see Him; when 
they train their little children and teach them how 
to pray, they see Him ; when they go to their work, 



198 Eternity in the: Heart. 

and toil from dawn to dark, they see Him; when 
they stumble, blindly groping, so they can not see 
at all, down toward the troubled waters men call 
"Death," they see HIM. 

REMEMBER, God is the big word in history 
and in humanity and in life, and religion is, doing 
what you do as seeing Him who filleth all in all. 



VIII. 
DAVID JESSE. 

PRAY BR. 

OUR Heavenly Father, when we begin to pray, then 
\we all begin to feel as if we were at home: however 
'strange the congregation was to us before we began, it 
begins to be fraternal when we essay to pray. We are 
like little children that have come home after long ab- 
sence; we know every room, we know what door to open, 
we know what faces to expect, we know what lips shall 
kiss us, we know what hand shall grasp our own, — O, 
God, we thank Thee that when we begin to pray, WE 
ARE COME HOME. Some of us have been off on a long 
journey; some of us have been away from our Father's 
house for many years, — O, God, help us this morning that 
our lips may learn the language of prayer. 

God is our father; the common Christ is our Savior; 
the common Holy Spirit is our Sanctiiier: here we are 
at home in Thy presence, — we are all brothers, all sisters, 
all lovers of one another and of God; all chaste in spirit, 
with holy subduedness of affection and regard. O, gra- 
cious Christ, make us to feel the brothers and sisters that 
we are. Our life is altogether too short for any bickerings 
or backslidings ; too dignified for any wavering of affec- 
tion or sense; our life is altogether too spiritual for the 
intervention of unholy moods of sense or sensuality. O, 
God, as we are bowed about Thy altar, make us to feel 
Thou art our Father ON EARTH as well as "Our Father 
199 



200 Eternity in the Heart. 

which art in Heaven." Make this moment sublime to us; 
make this moment very pitiful to us; make this moment 
very gracious to us; make this moment very inspiring to 
us also; because, when we begin to look God in the face 
and talk with him, it is sublime; it is pitiful, it is subdued 
and tender, it is gracious, unspeakably. 

O, our Heavenly Master, we pray that Thy wings 
which overshadowed the world of old, may overshadow us 
this morning; and brood Thou on our spirit, and woo us to 
devotion, and let us know our prayers may rise to sum- 
mits, because we love Thee, and because our hope lifts 
up its face and voice to Thee i and because we wait for 
Thee: O, revive our broken life once more, because we 
love Thee. 

We are here in God's house: and may it be as when an 
earthly father comes home from a long travel, and he 
gathers his little children, four or five of them,, together 
on his knees and in his arms, and hugs them all at once, — 
so may we all be taken into the dear arms, so may we all 
be taken into the dear arms and sweet compassion of God: 
let everybody feel he is remembered: let us all know that 
God is calling us by name, — and His voice is sweet and 
tender, and very gracious. 

O, Lord, in our discouragement, speak to us; in our 
encouragement speak to us; in our loneliness, speak to us; 
in our companionships, speak to us; in our culture, speak 
to us; in our ignorance, speak to us; in our gracelessness, 
speak to us; in our graciousness, speak to us: O, let us 
know, that every mood of our life, God may walk inside 
of it, as He would walk into the open door of an open 
house. 

God, bless us with Thy presence this morning; God do 
more, — bless us with a SBNSB of Thy presence; help us 
all according to Thy mercy. Thou hast not failed us yet. 

The lilies of the valley are in bloom; the sweet Wil- 
liams are in bloom; the lilacs are in bloom; the fields are 



David Jesse. 201 

fair, the leaves are green; the grass grows bewilderingly 
bright when smitten by the sunlight; the streams are run- 
ning gladsome; the birds are singing everywhere ; this is 
God's Spring-time on the earth: O, Blessed Master ; bring 
all Thy flowers and perfumes and bird-songs and laughters 
and delights, and growths into our life, and may it be 
Springtime in our spirits. 

Great God, we love Thee, and we worship Thee: great 
Christ, we run to Thee, and catch Thy hand and kiss it; 
great Holy Spirit, we call upon Thee in our prayer, help 
Thou our unbelief: out of this morning service, bring en- 
couragement, fruitful lives for goodness, holiness of atti- 
tude, and strenuous endeavor to do God's will. Help us to 
be good, — we do n't know how, but Thou dost bear us 
witness, zve want to do Thy will, — help us to do it to- 
day, and tomorrow, and the day after. May we "walk in 
the light as God is in the light, and have fellowship one 
with another." May there be no servitude of spirit, no 
evil thinking, — much less doing; but may there be beauti- 
ful lives, and love and grace and peace through our Lord 
Jesus Christ. 

Make every body at home this morning, however 
strange; make every lonely heart to have companionship ; 
make every broken man and woman fallen under the lash 
of life, to feel this morning, princeliness and holiness in 
heart. May we all together with common voice, and with 
common life and with common eagerness, run into God's 
arms, and feel the pressure of His arms about us, and feel 
WE HAVE GOTTEN HOME— we ask in the name of 
Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen. 



202 Eternity in the Heart. 



The text of the morning is the 23rd Psalm. I 
shall read it, — not because you are not familiar with 
it, but because it is the very ecstasy of music. 

As often happens, the son knew less than the 
father. On general theory, you could always jus- 
tify the conclusion that a father's son would know 
more than the son's father. He has had better 
chances, more of them, longer days. The days are 
getting longer all the time. The nights are getting 
shorter. I am not speaking according to calendars. 
I am not familiar with the almanac. I do n't keep 
almanacs because I get too hot when it is summer 
according to them, and too cold when it is winter. 
I prefer to take the palatable course through the 
year by being unfamiliar with the dates. I commend 
the procedure. But I am saying there is more day- 
light every day the world lives, and there is less 
darkness. Every day now, according to rigid com- 
putation, is 448 hours long. They used to be twelve 
hours or less. The days are growing incredibly in 
length : and because there is more daylight, there is 
more opportunity. You can see to read longer. The 
brain is getting bigger. Eye glasses are getting 
cheaper. Every appurtenance of information, there- 



David Jesse. 203 

fore, comes to the hand of the son of his father, and, 
on theory, I say you could justify the conclusion 
that every son would be wiser than his father. But 
many a time, logic is broken in the midst, and the 
father monopolizes all the genius of the family. 

Solomon thinks life is a failure. David thinks 
life is a success. Solomon had everything to his 
hand. David had n't anything : he even had to 
whittle out his shepherd's crook to pull his sheep 
from out the mire and ditch. The man who had 
everything his way, and to his hand, whines his 
way through life, and growls his way into his grave : 
and the man who had nothing his way, sings his way 
through life, and sings a song which is broken in 
the midst by the touch of the finger of Death. 

Now I think David's career more varied and 
wonderful than the career of Ulysses. I read this 
week, once more, the Odyssey, to refresh my mem- 
ory ; to catch anew the fragrance of the sea ; to hear 
once more the billows and boom of the waters break- 
ing on the rocks at night invisible : I read the Odys- 
sey once more to see how much "the untiring man" 
could teach me, — to get a recapitulation of his vir- 
tues, to see his fight. Why that man, Ulysses, his 
sleeves were rolled clean to the shoulders, his hands 
were black as if he had been begotten not in Ithaca, 



204 Eternity in the Heart. 

but in Ethopia ; and for ten years he waxed mighty 
against Troy and slew it ; and after those ten years, 
he fought other ten upon the great briny waters and 
slew them. It is an accruement of heroisms. The 
sea and the war, the tumult of the sky and the bat- 
tle of the land, shook around him as if he had been 
a storm beaten island coast. And after the storms 
are silenced, and the tempests have fled and ceased 
their raging across the thundering deeps of the great 
sea, after all the waters are quieted and lie tossing a 
little like a sleeping child moaning in his sleep, then 
Ulysses stands puissant, terrible, supreme. It will 
do most anybody good to read his life ; but I tell you, 
it will do you more good to read David's life. A 
ruddy-faced, golden-haired lad, with springing step, 
and with eager eyes ; with laughter accumulating in 
his heart enough to last him all the future if he never 
accumulated another smile; with step that ran and 
never ceased running; with hand as eager as ever 
hand of love aspired to be ; with a shepherd's crook 
and a shepherd's flock; and a harp hung on his left 
arm to keep it nigh the hand that had the music in it, 
— that is young David. And he is a younger son. 
There is not much of anything possible for him : his 
brothers despise him and his mother loves him, and 
kisses him betimes when he comes in tired from the 



David Jesse:. 205 

folding of the sheep at night. And then he falls 
asleep and dreams ecstasies, and wakens in the morn- 
ing and goes with his flocks, and sings the songs of 
the morning, and breaks the dew-drops from the 
meadow grasses with the hurrying of his feet ; there 
he is, out on the long hill, out on the crest of the 
hill reaching toward the dome of the blue sky, out 
on the leaning hillside stretching toward the sunset, 
— that is David. And by and by he goes and takes 
bread to his brothers, and they despise him ; and by 
and by he looks the giant in the face and laughs at 
him, and the giant is angered; and by and by he 
puts on the king's armor and jangles about in it, 
and tosses it off, and goes out in the field and slays 
Israel's adversary : and goes back to his flocks, and 
again sings once more, with his harp in his hand, 
and his fingers smite on the wondrous strings that 
call aloud so that the sheep listen to him at noon 
time and follow him at night. 

Only a flock, and it is not his ; only a shepherd's 
crook, and he does not possess it; only a harp, and 
it belongs to his father Jesse: nothing, only life, — 
that is enough ; only the blue sky, that is a plenty ; 
only the great God, that is sufficient. He had him- 
self and the open space and God beyond it, and that 
is enough for anybody's life. 



206 Eternity in the Heart. 

And he had to fight. Javelins were hurled at 
him ; conspiracies waxed strong against him ; a 
thousand foes bared their blades and ran at him like 
knights in a tournament, full speed. A thousand 
calamities? Yes. Multitudes of disasters? Yes. 
Broken purposes? Yes. Watch where he went, 
and you will find it is like the debris that follows an 
army swollen with catastrophe and broken with dis- 
aster. O, but he is singing! O, but he is writing 
psalms! O, but when his heart is breaking, he 
catches his old harp, and the strings of it are black 
with the touches of his fingers, and he sings on it, so 
that this morning we have listened to its cadences, 
and he said, "The Lord is my shepherd ; I shall not 
want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, 
He leadeth me beside the still waters," — O, life is 
music, that is what he thought, and that is what he 
said. 

This Psalm was written after David's battles 
were ceased; after all his enemies had been mar- 
shalled against him; after every enemy had been 
malignant against him. Young lads don't sing of 
what they are doing, but what they THINK THEY 
WILL DO, don't you know that? The lad tend- 
ing flocks would not think about flocks; he would 
sing about armies and princehoods and statescraft 



David Jesse. 207 

and kingships; and then when a man gets to be a 
king, then he sings about flocks and shepherds' 
crooks and purling brooks and green meadows and 
wandering winds. 

The farmer's boy does n't think very much about 
how fine the hay smells. So he gets the hay tossed 
off his pitch fork, he does n't give a flip how it 
smells. When you are a farmer's lad, you don't 
think about singing birds, and fairy nights and 
"how sweet the moonlight sleeps upon yon bank," 
you are asleep yourself before the moonlight gets a 
chance at the night, and you do n't think, much less 
talk about it. 

In our childhood, when life is before us, and we 
are knee deep in clover, we do n't catch the clover 
heads and swing them to and fro and catch the in- 
cense of their gracious perfume ; and we do n't care 
to count the ripples on the stream, nor the shadows 
in the water ; we do n't see how the green bank leans 
to where the water flows, nor how the shadows of the 
tree-tops lean to kiss the flow, — we do n't see them, 
leastwise we do n't think of them if we see them. A 
boy dreams about soldiers and statesmen and poets 
and business men ; he deals with the great unknown 
quantities, and never a one of them is the thing he 
prizes after. You get to be a statesman, and you 



208 Eternity in the Heart. 

get so tired of the throng, and the noise of the com- 
pany, and the multitudes of letters that have to be 
dictated, and the fine address and finesse that must 
be used, — you grow so weary, you lean your head 
upon your hands, and you see green cornfields in 
which you used to plow, and you say, "What an easy 
job I had !" And you see the hay you used to pitch 
in the Autumn time, and you wish to goodness you 
had hold of the handle of the pitch fork and did n't 
have anything harder to do than that. Now, you 
have to pitch a thousand politicians in a week. 

O, we begin, when we get to be men, we begin 
to think about when we used to be lads ; we begin 
to think about the other days and yesterdays. How 
sweet the green wood looks, don't it? How sweet 
the green sward is, is n't it ? How sweet the dew 
drops on the morning meadows. How sweet it used 
to be when you were a lad and early in the morning 
went riding through the cool shadows of the wood 
on your father's horse looking for your father's cow, 
— you didn't find the cow, but, — you found the 
horse. Wasn't it fun? How jubilant you were; 
hoy topsy turvy life was, — you could stand on your 
head or on your feet with equal impunity and equa- 
nimity. How long ago was it ? I tell you, honestly, 
you think about it, do n't you, a good deal ? When 



David Jesse. 209 

you used to be a lad, you thought may be you would 
get to be a speaker and people would come to listen 
to you. (The doors would be locked and they 
could n't get out, and would stay till you are 
through.) You thought you might be a speaker, and 
people would come when you spoke. And after 
while, when you became a speaker, and people came 
to listen to you, then, sometimes, your life was so 
tired, and your heart so heavy, and your courage so 
broken, and your hopes so drooping like flowers 
withered in the hot winds in summer ; and then, you 
thought of the green hills, and the nodding of the 
green fields' plumes. I tell you, we think about 
youth a good deal, because we are always fronting 
it, always going toward it. Afterwhile, we will be 
young forever. It is a good thing not to be in love 
with old age too much, because some of these good 
days, you will sleep over night, and in the morning 
when you wake up, your gray beard will be golden 
as in youth, and your black locks, they will be with 
you once more: not a thread of silver in your hair; 
not a dusty patch upon your garment; not a bit of 
weariness in your step, nor ambling in your gait ; no 
stooping of the shoulders, — only youth, celestial, 
eternal, glorious ! We are going toward it. 
14 



210 Eternity in the Heart. 

And when David gets to be old, he talks about 
LIFE. I appeal to you, — this Psalm sounds pretty 
good! It sounds pretty good to hear an old man 
give a good report of life. I want you to remem- 
ber, this Psalm has n't a disgruntled tone in it. I 
want you to remember, David was not sour, he is 
as sweet as honeysuckle's breath. He is as sweet as 
perfume puffed from the incense basins of the lilacs 
when the Spring is fresh. David has no ill report 
to bring in the world. He has been in it a long 
time ; he is scarred with it, but not soured with it. 

I want you to notice some things about David's 
life. He says life is to be summed up in poetry. 
Life is a poem, — is that right, David? O, David, 
you are so stooped and weary ! Did you used to be 
straight ? Did your slow steps use to run ? Did that 
shriveled arm that trembles when you hold your 
hand out to catch the scepter, did that arm and hand 
use to be so strong you could grasp Goliath's sword 
and hold it straight out and it never quivered ? Da- 
vid, with your old, stooped head, with your long gray 
beard, with your hair silvered, — only a thread of the 
old ruddy tint in it, David, what about it? And he 
says, "Life is a poem." I would n't have thought it ; 
I thought life was prose ; I thought life was a hard, 
mathematical problem calculated to make you stum- 



David Jesse. 211 

ble as you go along, — I thought it was that, but 
David says, "Life is a poem." 

Did you ever know so much put into so little as 
this? Never once! Honestly, did you? ALL of 
life is here, nothing is left out, — its sobs, its laugh- 
ter, its enemies; its quietness is here; its respite is 
here; its hope is here; its dream is here; its here- 
after is here, — where did you find so much in so little? 
Why, it is an amazing thing how much landscape 
you can see through a little window. I saw a girl 
on the train the other day, take out a pocket glass, 
and she seemed to examine her face from every sort 
of side, and she looked this way and that way, and 
I felt like saying, "Sis, you are through: you have 
seen all : I would n't want to see so much," — but I 
did n't say a thing. I sat there as if I were reading 
the Testament. Just a little bit of window, and you 
can see a great landscape, sometimes fair, and some- 
times unbeautiful. Just a little bit of window and 
you can see a great landscape, sometimes fair and 
sometimes unbeautiful. Just a little bit of a win- 
dow and the whole sky or half, comes into the 
window. 

I have stood on the heights of Quebec looking on 
the far coast and the mountains, and have seen four 
ranges of mountains^ one behind the other like the 



212 Eternity in the Heart. 

march of some army. Here is one who looked 
through one little window and saw the earth, and 
he says the earth is poetry. I will tell you this: 
you can not get very far along in life until you 
strike into the measure of poetry. What tune is the 
army marching to? O, the tune is "Marching 
through Georgia," and they are WALKING 
MUSIC. You can not get people to pray long until 
their prayer is poetry ; and God hires an angel by the 
day to write down what people say when they pray, 
because it is dripping with tears sometimes, and 
sometimes with blood, — but you can not pray long 
without praying poetry ; you can not love long with- 
out loving poetry; you can not suffer much nobly 
without growing strong and making life a poem; 
you can not do a good turn for anybody, you can 
not do a good turn for yourself, without somehow 
lifting your life into the swing and music and grace 
of poetry, — you can not do it. Life is not a legal 
code, life is not a law book, life is not a news paper 
column, life is not a column of figures ; life, — what 
is it ? O, it is the biggest poem that was ever set to 
words. God is the great poet in life; and a man's 
life, a woman's lift, is the biggest, sweetest poem 
He ever wrote. 

"Paradise Lost" is the poem that catches all the 



David Jesse. 213 

disasters and lonelinesses of the lost Puritan cause; 
Dante's Paradiso is the poem that catches up all 
the long, wearied marchings and counter-marchings 
and heart-achings and heart-breaks of a great life's 
history. 

Lowell's "Commemoration Ode" seems to be the 
Rebellion ; it brings every soldier, every drum, every 
cannon booming across the waste of mountain, land, 
or sea ; it has every star and stripe lifted toward the 
sky ; all of it is there ; read that poem and you have 
all the Rebellion, — all its mutations, all its marches, 
all its tremendous onslaught all its colossal victory. 

It doesn't take a very big picture to catch all 
the items of the landscape of a life : and David says 
here that life is a poem : Did n't you know that ? 
Did n't you know that ? Life is a poem,-— life has 
losses and carnage and struggle, but they are poetry, 
also. Sometimes people complain at work. I would 
rather complain at sleep. Sleep is a getting off of 
the office chair to rest your legs a little, — that is all. 
And then we climb up on the chair again and go to 
work. Work is good for us; we are made for it; 
it does us good ; it loves us and we ought to love it. 
I would rather complain at slumber than effort. 
Your work makes something of you. Weak livered, 
weak muscled, weak nerved people that never work, 



214 Eternity in the Heart. 

— the whistle of the wind makes them weary, the 
clamor of the horses' feet upon the street makes 
them tired. Life is work and struggle and crush and 
furious besetment, but those things are all poetry. 
Did you ever read Browning's "How they brought 
the Good News from Ghent to Aix?" The tumult 
of leaping steeds is there ; their hoofs smite fire from 
the pavement as they run. Life is a huge race to a 
goal fetching comfort, — life is a poem. 

If you will read this Psalm again, you will find 
out that life is a romance. What is Romance ? What 
girls dream about. What is Romance? What a 
fellow thinks about when he is in love, before mar- 
riage or after. What is Romance? O, it is bottled 
sunshine poured out. What is Romance? O, it is 
something that irons the creases out of your care with 
never a lacerating blow in the process. What is 
Romance? It is seeing life in God's perspectives; 
will all the fierce, marauding fury of the breath of 
tempests, all the storms of sand on desert's waste, 
all glorified by standing above them and looking at 
them afar: that, that is romance. Have you never 
had the romance of a big life? Why have you not 
mastered your lesson ? Did you never go to school ? 
Did you never have your heart for school master? 
Did you never fall in love with anybody more than 



David Jessic. 215 

yourself? That is what everybody does if he lives 
life at all. Your life is not so prosaic as you think. 
Did you never have a rainy day ? Have n't you got 
an empty chair at your table, — Longfellow told about 
it. Did you never stand on the bridge at midnight ? 
He "stood on the bridge at midnight when the clocks 
were striking the hour." Did you never weep for 
friends who would come no more, and you stood and 
heard nothing but, "Break, break, break," and "Oh 
for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a 
voice that is still !" Did you never lean and look over 
Autumn woodland or field, and feel that life had 
fallen into "the sere and yellow leaf?" Life is a 
romance, be sure of that. Your life is not as un- 
eventful as you think. You have had happy hours 
and glorious day-dawns. I defy any man to get in 
love with a good woman, and not find life won- 
derful as spring-time. I defy any woman to fall 
in love and not find life transfigured. I defy any 
man or woman to take his baby in his arms and look 
in its face, and not find life bewilderingly fair. Did 
you ever hear your children in the morning, tun- 
ing up on the piano and singing? The piano is al- 
ways out of tune, — leastwise it never agrees with the 
voice of the children, and they play all tunes at once, 
and sing no tune in time, — did you ever sit in the 



216 Eternity in the: Heart. 

other room, and hear that, and not have life put on 
new music ? Why, the sweetest voice that ever sang 
was not so sweet as this. 

Then this Psalm says life is JOY. Don't be 
dyspeptic, David never was, — at least if he was, he 
never told it, which is something on toward Ihe same 
thing. If people would just keep quiet about what 
is the matter with them, they would do the com- 
munity a favor ; we would not know they had any- 
thing the matter with them ; they might suffer, but 
we would not know it. There is a good deal to that 
— now, honestly, a good deal to that. Make life 
joyful. This man did, and he had more troubles 
than we have had : but as I tell you, he kept his harp 
nigh him, and when his troubles got the upper hand 
of him, he prayed, and set his prayer to music. 
There is n't any music for the heart like prayer, and 
there is n't any poetry that sets to music like the 
prayer wrung from your broken life. JOY! 

Now when you look over this man's geography 
of life, there are certain things you will find out 
about it. His life has a sort of triumphant move- 
ment in it. This man had many difficulties, but you 
do n't find him exhibiting them, except it may be as 
soldiers talk of battles. Did you ever hear soldiers 
talking about the war ? If you did n't, go and have 



David Jesse;. 217 

and old fellow tell you Jiow many times he was 
wounded, and how he used to march, and the bat- 
tles he won, — it will do you good. It may do him 
good, but I tell you, it will not do you any harm. 
Do you think he will make much of his disasters? 
No. Do you think he will pronounce a requiem to 
you? No. What will he do? O, he will say, 
"Those were great days, great days." How many 
years were you in the service? "Three years and a 
half," he says with a touch of pride such as he ought 
to exhibit ; for any man who bore his country's colors 
and fought for them, has a right to lordly pride; 
and he has the courage and the history that together 
conspire to make a big poem. He wont make much 
of hard times, only to set off the victories, and the 
home-comings and the joys. "O," he says, "it was 
worth it." I know an old soldier, — he has never 
learned what spelling was made for, never. He 
never has learned what grammar was constructed 
for. He has never learned a good many things you 
and I would think go into the curriculum of an or- 
dinary well-balanced life. He can lie like a fish 
can drink water. I don't know where he learned 
it. He can tell more impossible yarns than I ever 
heard from anybody but a natural-born Ike Walton 
fisherman. And the other day, I saw him again, 



218 Eternity in the: Heart. 

and looked at him, and I think he and soap had n't 
met since I had seen him before, — a poor, scrawny 
looking bit of flesh and dirt in equal proportions, — 
but that old fellow came out of Libby Prison, white 
as a bit of linen whitened on the fields ; thin as a bit 
of hay to be blown across the meadow when the 
storm was on, — and that old fellow, with his strange 
looks, and curious ways, and ambling speech, and 
disastrously convoluted grammar, and with his ex- 
ceeding imaginativeness of narrative, — I have heard 
him tell about the battle and the storm, and the bul- 
lets and the wounded, until I have wept and gone out 
in the dark to let my tears have a chance to wash 
the dust away from my eyes. TRIUMPH ! That 
is what the old fellow talks about. David says, Life 
is a TRIUMPH. Hear me! Don't you listen to 
people that say life is not worth your trying, you 
can not win your way ; do n't you believe it. Thank 
God it is an unholy lie. Triumph! Triumph! In 
the thick of the fight, Triumph! In the shock of 
battles, Triumph! Into the tomb, Triumph! Into 
the resurrection, Triumph! Into the Kingdom of 
God, Triumph ! It hoists its standard, and marches 
with bugle notes, Triumph forever! Then if you 
will read this story, you will find out that life is 
WORK and plenty of it. Do n't snarl about work, 
be engaged with it. Work, and plenty of it. 



David Jesss. 219 

You will find out that there are enemies. What 
ought a person to do if he has enemies? Well, I 
declare, I do n't quite know ; but I will tell you some- 
thing nice ; I think the best thing to do if you have 
enemies (and probably you will have them if you 
stay in your place, and say your say, and do your 
work however consistently, you will have enemies), 
the best thing to do is not to dwell on them : do n't 
underscore them. Some people underscore all the 
mean words, — a letter sounds a good deal according 
to the underscoring, and not what is said in it. I 
have read letters, and thought if the underscoring 
were changed, how it would change the letter; you 
would n't have to change a single letter nor a word, 
but just the underscoring. Supposing a letter from 
somebody said: " I love (love underscored) you so 
(so underscored four times) much." That is one 
way ; and then if another girl gets a hold of it she 
writes, "I love you so much," "YOU" underscored 
sixteen times. Now she need not tell you she 
LOVES you, we know that well enough, but the 
trick is, HOW DOES SHE DIRECT HER AF- 
FECTIONS ? and when she underscores YOU, your 
heart trips. There is a good deal of difference in 
the underscoring. Don't you underscore your ene- 
mies too much; they will underscore themselves; 
do n't worry about them ; try not to think of them : 



220 Eternity in the Heart. 

if you have enemies, and likely you have, as every- 
body is liable to have, do n't think very much about 
them. You can train yourself to think about en- 
mities and enemies, and you can train yourself not 
to think about them, and you can sour life one way, 
and you can sweeten life the other way. It is better 
to drink life's milk than to let it sour with thunder 
showers. 

Pay a good deal of attention to the friendships of 
life : cultivate the happinesses and joys and holidays 
and noble affections in life, — do that, O, do that. 
This man had enemies, but he got on well with them. 
There is a great philosophy in dealing even with 
enemies: don't imbrue your hands in their blood, 
do n't try dynamite on them, but keep sweet in spite 
of them. 

David said he had God's leadership. That is the 
kind of a captain life needs to have, and if it has it, 
things go pretty well. Did you men sit up nights 
to know how the great Grant was going to move? 
Did you sit up nights try to figure out how great 
the commander was ? You did not. No. You fol- 
lowed orders, tkat is all. Well, God is our Captain, 
— "The Lord is my shepherd," — I am well led ; He 
goes through darkness the same as through light; 
he goes through night and never cares for the storm- 



David Jesse. 221 

cloud. He goes ahead of me, and there He is and 
I can hear His voice, and he is saying, "This way, 
this way, this way :" and if the thunders jangle their 
angry cymbals by my ear, I can hear Him saying 
through it all, "This way ; never despair ; this way :" 
and if the night is dark and I can not see Him, I 
can hear Him say, "This way, this way." "The 
Lord is my shepherd," — when I am distressed, He 
shepherds me ; in the midst of temptations, He shep- 
herds me ; He leads me in my loneliness and in my 
sorrow ; He leads me in my calamity and in my 
triumph; He leads me in my equipment and in my 
effort, — in my study, and in my toil, and in my 
achievement. He shepherds me. O, Beloved, why 
should n't life be triumphant and singing ? Why 
should n't life have«hilarity ? 

Then you will find out from this Psalm that life 
is a healthy process. It is a thoroughly good thing 
to live. Life is health. Distrust a religion that pro- 
duces morbidity. Believe in God with a healthy 
hope. 

And then this Psalm says there is the following 
of Goodness and Mercy. Our Captain is God : and 
behind, lest we be overtaken and slain, Goodness 
and Mercy are there following. And Goodness 
hath her face hidden in a veil. I have never seen 



222 Eternity in the Heart. 

her eyes. I never saw her face, only sometimes 
I have thought I have seen her lips quiver, — 
that is Goodness ; and all I have ever seen of Good- 
ness, has been her hands. I don't know whether 
her face is wrinkled or young ; I do n't know whether 
her eyes are full of tears or full of laughter. I do n't 
know. I have only seen her hands : Goodness is 
following, and Goodness hath a hand, — sometimes I 
have looked at it, and I thought it a woman's hand, 
and that it was weak and could do nothing but hold 
babies and tend the sick, and feed the poor, — and 
then I have thought it was a hand so gigantic, it 
could hold in the stars when they racing faster than 
the tempest's steeds, and make them all run back 
and stay a minute. God is in front of me: I see 
Him moving like an ocean : and behind is Goodness. 

And then there is Mercy. I never saw Mercy's 
hands, but I have seen her face; I only know she 
has a face with never a veil on it, and the smile is 
forever in her eyes, — and sometimes the smile is 
shadowed with tears, but it is there : and these two 
follow after us. 

"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all 
the days of my life!" David, where's your staff? 
And he says, "Why," — he is so old, and his words 
are brittle, and they break when vou touch them, 



David Jesse. 223 

and, — David, where is your shepherd's crook? 
"W-h-y," he says, "Shepherd's c-r-o-o-k? W-h-y, 
I have forgotten, — where, I put it." Oh, David, 
David, how I pity you : and I said, "David, where's 
your harp ?" "Oh," he said, "my harp ? I, think, its 
strings are broken." David, where's your sword 
you fetched from slaying Goliath? And he says, 
"The sword I, fetched, from, slaying, Goliath ? — Oh, 
— I don't know?" And your Kingdom, David, 
where's your Kingdom? And he says "My k-i-n-g- 
d-o-m ? D-o you m-e-a-n my shepherd's flock, a-n-d 
t-h-e fi-e-l-d ?" No, David, where is your kingdom ? 
Your KINGDOM ? And he says, "You mistake the 
man : I am a shepherd. And say, "Where 's your 
God, David?" "O," he said, "The Lord is my shep- 
herd. Goodness and Mercy shall follow me all the 
days of my life, and I shall dwell in the House of 
the Lord forever." 

That is the geography of life, — God ahead, and 
Goodness and Mercy to follow you : and before your 
goings, and opening gate, — not a wide-open gate, 
don't think that, — but when you get to it, it will 
be opened, and you will go through it, and, — "Good- 
ness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my 
life." Oh, David, your hair is gray, your shoulders 
are stooped, and your memory is broken, and your 



224 Eternity in the: Heart. 

crown is tarnished, and your kingdom is gone, and 
your glory is departed, — but, "I shall dwell in the 
house of the Lord forever!" And then he sings it 
again, "Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the 
days of my life ; and I shall dwell in the house of the 
Lord forever !" And he says, "Where is my harp ? 
Bring it to me." And he says, "Where is my shep- 
herd's staff? Bring it to me. "Goodness and Mercy 
SHALL FOLLOW ME ALL THE DAYS OF 
MY LIFE: AND I SHALL DWELL IN THE 
HOUSE OF THE LORD FOREVER !"— and his 
voice hath all the quaver lost; and the tremble is 
gone from his step : and there is no tripping of the 
words; and he is clamoring like soldiers clamor 
when the battle turns from defeat to triumph, — "I 
shall dwell in the house of the Lord, FOREVER! 
I SHALL dwell in the House of the Lord, FOR- 
EVER!!" 

And I went away, and I heard his voice clamor- 
ing and clanging like triumphant troops with all 
their battle harness on, — and that voice has clang- 
ored through all the centuries, "GOODNESS AND 
MERCY SHALL FOLLOW ME ALL THE 
DAYS OF MY LIFE, AND I SHALL DWELL 
IN THE HOUSE OF THE LORD, FOR- 
EVER!!! Hear it! Amen. 



DEC 3 1904 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



021 899 532 9 




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